Court Services Director Ward Byers appeared before the Marshall County Commissioners this week to discuss a contract addendum with 3M for electronic monitoring services.
The county signed a contract with 3M in 2011 that does the very basic in electronic monitoring services. If an offender commits a violation, a message is sent via text message or email to officials on mobile devices or to a desktop computer. Byers said this addendum will offer more to the county.
“This contract addendum will allow for some extended monitoring. We’ll still receive those texts and emails. My biggest concerns is that I will sleep through one of those at some point in time. So, what will happen is if I do not reply to that text or email electronically by a specified period of time the 3M operators will call me,” explained Byers.
Violations include the tampering of an ankle monitoring system and a strap cut. A battery violation can also occur and if the defendant doesn’t comply with 3M officials in replacing a drained battery the court services director will take over the situation from there.
The contact would cost an additional $1 per inmate per day for the enhanced monitoring. That cost will be passed to the offender as part of the daily fees. There are 35 offenders on home detention at this time.
The contract addendum was unanimously approved by the three commissioners.
