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County‑funded electronic monitoring near capacity as diversion programs slow; nonprofit reports only four monitors available
Summary
A county‑funded nonprofit that manages pretrial electronic monitoring said Wake County has 300 funded monitors and that program usage recently rose to near capacity (only four monitors available at the meeting), prompting requests from commissioners for cost comparisons between expanding monitoring and adding detention capacity.
Jennifer Gibbs of the Criminal Justice Alternatives nonprofit described county‑funded pretrial electronic monitoring and diversion services. She said the nonprofit contracts for private monitoring units and provides case management and risk assessment support: "We are funded by the county... We have 300 monitors total that are funded by the county... as of today, we have 4 monitors available," Gibbs said, noting a short waiting list.
Gibbs said program success is measured two ways: court‑appearance (failure‑to‑appear) rates and new criminal arrests while on supervision. She said the higher figure (about 92 percent) reflects court‑appearance rates for supervised defendants and that new‑arrest rates are generally in the 70–80 percent range for the supervised population. Commissioners asked staff to model the marginal cost of expanding electronic monitoring capacity (monitors, vendor costs, and supervision staff) versus the marginal cost of added detention beds; staff agreed to provide those comparative estimates in follow‑up work with GSA and the nonprofit.
Gibbs and Davis said diversion use has increased since 2020 but has been affected recently by new state legislation and delays in state‑run competency and mental‑health evaluations that can preclude eligibility for certain diversion programs (for example, NC RISE mental‑health diversion requires state evaluations).
