GPS tracking of offenders

SANDY — "Do you have permission to be outside of this area?" the operator asks, staring at the computer screen and talking into her headset.

After a moment of listening to the excuse, she frowns and makes a few mouse clicks.

"Your supervising officer will be notified," she says.

The man on the other end of the conversation is getting the bad news from the TrackerPAL device strapped to his ankle. He's stepped into an area designated out-of-bounds, and now he's being called on it.

The TrackerPAL is a newly released offender monitoring system that merges GPS, computer and cell phone technology in one tiny unit powered by a 20-hour battery.

"Let's take a sex offender," said Randy Olshen, the president of Utah-based SecureAlert, which makes and markets the TrackerPAL.

"They are told they need to stay away from schools and parks. So the officer goes into our software and sets exclusion zones around those areas," he said.

The small, blue, waterproof device straps to an offender's ankle and tracks their movements using GPS technology.

"They get near that park and, ultimately, they cross that invisible fence. It immediately sends an alarm to the monitoring center, and within a matter of a minute or two, the monitoring center is now on the line with them — live," Olshen said.

At a 24-hour monitoring center in Sandy, employees track dozens of offenders' whereabouts. If they step someplace they shouldn't, an alert pops up on the screen. The cell unit in the TrackerPAL allows operators and offenders to converse and can get police or probation officers involved. It also puts out a 95-decibel siren if the offender goes into a forbidden area or is hiding when the police are actively searching for them.

"At the end of the day, that immediate response helps them rethink whether they're going to re-offend or not," Olshen said.

SecureAlert started out making cell-based alert and GPS systems primarily for elderly people who fall and can't get up.

"We had an investor that was on a parole board in his state," said Peter Derrick, the company's marketing director. "He expressed frustration for what's currently out there."

That led to the creation of the TrackerPAL.

The software can customize out-of-bounds areas to include parks and schools. It can also be used to track curfew and whether someone is early or late to their job.

"It's a drug park. He's not supposed to be in this area," Heather Fischer said as she tracked a man on probation who just left a school zone in another state.

She placed a phone call to the local sheriff's office, alerting them about the status of the offender.