Congressional Democrats Take Aim at For-Profit Probation, Electronic Monitoring Companies

In letters sent Tuesday to Sentinel Offender Services, a for-profit probation contractor, and Attenti Group, an electronic monitoring services provider, more than a dozen congressional Democrats excoriated the companies for allegedly abusive industry practices that heap debt onto vulnerable people who are already living in poverty. 

The lawmakers have given the companies an Aug. 8 deadline to provide information on their profits, policies, practices, and contracts with local governments. 

Nearly 20 lawmakers signed the letters, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders, as well as Representatives Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley. 

“Robust oversight” of these industries is “long overdue,” said Rep. Tony Cárdenas of California, one of the letter’s signers, in a statement to The Appeal.

In recent decades, jurisdictions across the U.S. have increasingly outsourced probation and other state-mandated supervision services to private companies, giving for-profit agencies largely unchecked power to impose fees and restrictive conditions on individuals who are disproportionately poor and struggling to find stability. 

These companies “drive people into crushing cycles of debt to pad the profits of corporations,” said Sen. Warren of Massachusetts, another signer, in a statement to The Appeal. “These fees are just another way that money is squeezed from some of the poorest people in society.”

‘Trapped in a Cycle of Debt’

Private probation companies charge people an average of $30 to $60 per month for supervision, along with additional “junk fees” for initial enrollment, rescheduled appointments, alcohol or electronic monitors, drug tests, underpayments, and more, according to the letter addressed to Sentinel Offender Services founder Robert Contestabile. 

Many of the nation’s nearly 3 million probationers have been placed on supervision simply because they couldn’t afford to pay a fine or traffic ticket on the day of their court appearance. A nationwide survey found that two out of every three people on probation made less than $20,000 per year; of those, nearly 40 percent earned less than $10,000. This population is also disproportionately Black—one in every 23 Black people is under supervision, compared to one in every 81 white people.

Those unable to pay probation fees are often punished with extended probation time, which leads to even more debt. In some cases, the probation fees people pay amount to more than their original fine. The letter references the case of a woman who ended up owing hundreds of dollars to a private probation company after being placed on supervision over a $41 traffic ticket. 

“Even if they avert jail time, individuals are left trapped in a cycle of debt,” the lawmakers wrote. “Many sacrifice paying for other essential expenses in order to scrape together probation payments. Their payments flow into an industry that is a financial black box.”

Failure to pay can result in catastrophic consequences, including exclusion from public benefits, driver’s license suspension, and jail time. Even though it is unconstitutional to jail someone for being unable to pay fines and fees, a 2020 report found that courts often shirk their responsibility to assess a person’s ability to pay when a private company is involved. 

In their letter, lawmakers detail the industry’s use of “egregious fee-collection abuses” to ensure their clients pay as much money for as long as possible. In some cases, private probation companies have used client payments to pay down their own service fees before applying them to underlying court fines. Companies have also imposed fees for services not ordered by the court, such as drug testing, and continued to collect fees even after the probation term has ended, lawmakers wrote.

The mountain of resulting fees amounts to big business for these for-profit entities, which are estimated to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue nationwide each year, according to the letter.

A ‘Nightmarish Cascade of Consequences’

In their letter to Attenti Group CEO Yoav Reisman, lawmakers raise concerns with a variety of “emerging trends” in electronic monitoring services, including their levying of “abusive and unnecessary fees” and burdensome restrictions on clients’ movement and privacy.

Electronic monitoring has grown nearly tenfold in the U.S. over the past two decades, mainly due to its increasing use by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But, as more jurisdictions adopt electronic monitoring to supervise individuals entangled in the legal system, this has not typically been associated with decreased incarceration. In fact, research has found that many people subjected to electronic monitoring wouldn’t have been jailed in the first place.

“In effect, [electronic monitoring] appears to quietly widen the net of who all is subject to supervision, while imposing severe burdens on those who are subject to monitoring,” the lawmakers wrote. 

Like private probation services, electronic monitoring companies often charge people excessive fees they can’t afford, including user fees of between $5 and $30 per day and hundreds of dollars in mandatory “junk fees” for installation and battery replacement, according to the letter. 

Once on electronic monitoring, individuals must adhere to strict terms of home confinement or risk ending up in jail or prison. Companies may also threaten wearers with incarceration if they don’t keep up with fees, said Allison Frankel, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. 

“They have this tremendous profit motive to eke money out of people,” Frankel told The Appeal. “You hear reports of them saying, ‘Call a friend, call a loved one, call your parents. Come to me with some amount of money, or you’re going back to jail.’”

As with many aspects of the criminal legal system, the letter from Congress also notes that the harms of electronic monitoring aren’t felt equally across racial groups.

“[This] nightmarish cascade of consequences is disproportionately faced by Black Americans, who are more likely to be placed on [electronic monitoring] and face more restrictive … conditions than their white counterparts,” the lawmakers wrote. 

People on electronic monitoring report experiencing psychological and physical harm. In a survey of over 100 respondents subject to monitoring, one in five said they had experienced electric shocks and almost 90 percent reported a negative impact on their mental health, including anxiety and depression. Individuals on electronic monitoring are at the whims of company employees who determine if and when they can leave their homes, the lawmakers wrote. 

“They’re literally having to make a decision of, ‘Should I take my mother to the hospital?’” said Emmett Sanders, a Policy and Advocacy Associate at the Prison Policy Initiative who authored a report on electronic monitoring. “‘Should I take my kid to the emergency room and risk going back to jail?’”

Sanders was on electronic monitoring for 90 days after returning home from serving 22 years in prison. While there were no fees associated with his service, which was administered through the state and not a private provider, Sanders said it still exacted a psychological toll on him and his partner. He was only permitted to leave his house for four hours three times a week. 

“This was just constantly hanging over our heads about how much time I had to get back to the house,” said Sanders. “I remember one time I finally got a job, and I was taking the bus, and the bus was late. I was terrified that I was going to go back to prison.”

Read the letters: