Pushing Back on Electronic Monitoring for Young People

This report, written in collaboration with several groups including the East Bay Community Law Center and The Center for Racial and Economic Justice at UC Law SF, provides research, resources and practice suggestions for youth defenders to utilize when arguing against the use of electronic monitoring in juvenile court proceedings.

From the introduction: “The use of electronic ankle monitoring (“EM”) is expanding in the juvenile criminal legal system, as are the problems young people face when ordered to wear a monitor. Young people on monitors are often caught in a cycle of monitoring, spending time in detention for a technical violation, and then more months on a monitor as a consequence of the violation. Monitoring itself, the attendant rules and conditions, the stigma and frequent detention for violations are all harmful to youth, particularly youth with disabilities. Although monitoring is imposed at different stages of the juvenile court process (sometimes as a condition of pretrial release or probation), the problems associated with monitoring are the same. EM, like incarceration, is especially harmful for young people at all stages of the juvenile court process.

This report aims to help juvenile defenders and youth advocates push back against the use of monitoring in the first instance and, if monitoring is imposed, to argue for less harmful rules and conditions.”