An Overview of the San Diego County Program)

This paper discusses the development of electronic monitoring, explains basic functions, discusses applications, provides information on specific equipment, examines test results, and presents a brief overview of the Electronic Surveillance Program (Work Furlough Program) operated by the San Diego County Probation Department. The paper concludes with a synopsis of the major public concerns about electronic monitoring. The front page of the July 8, 1987, Los Angeles Times reported that electronic monitoring was being utilized for the first time in Los Angeles to confine a convicted slumlord, a practicing neurosurgeon, to a rat-infested apartment building he owns and rents. In a judge-ordered sentence, believed to be unique, the doctor, labeled the "Rat Lord," was sentenced to house arrest for repeated failure to correct hundreds of violations of the city's ordinances which require a landlord keep rentals in sanitary and livable condition. The term "Rat Lord" was given to the property owner because of the description of various tenants of the large rats that infected his rental properties (Times, 3uly 8, 1987). The sentence required that the "Rat Lord" reside in one of his own rental units for thirty days without prior cleanup operations. The apartment building he inhabited was said to be full of cockroaches, fleas, lice, rats, as well as other unsanitary conditions, and a haven for junkies, dope pushers, winos, and street walkers. To ensure that