English Audio Request

One way to achieve this result is through monitoring devices like those supplied by BI. But a pioneering judge in Hawaii has demonstrated that it can also be accomplished without the technological assist. In the early 2000s, Steven Alm, a circuit judge in Honolulu, grew increasingly frustrated with what he viewed as a farcical probation system. The majority of the cases he saw were drug-related offenses, including property crimes such as burglaries and thefts from tourists' rental cars. Many of the defendants in his court received probation, but once they were back on the street, they might as well never have been convicted. Drug tests, for instance, were scheduled a full month in advance, even though the test could detect meth use only within the previous three days. Despite this, probationers still tested positive about half of the time, indicating that they couldn't stay clean for even that short interval.
One reason for the backsliding, presumably, was that violators knew that in practice they had little to fear. Probation officers had limited time and resources, and to ask for a convict's probation to be revoked would require a great deal of work. Moreover, officers weren't always eager to send someone to prison for five years just for getting high. Since the probationers viewed the enforcers of their probation as lenient, overworked, and somewhat unpredictable, they correctly assumed there was a good chance they could get away with toking up at will.
Then, in 2004, Judge Alm decided to test the "swift and certain" paradigm. "It's something we always talk about in the sociology classes," he told me. "It just never happens in the criminal-justice system." Alm, a former U.S. attorney who was born in Hawaii, instituted what academics such as Kleiman describe as one of the most innovative and successful alternatives to incarceration in recent years. The basic tenet will be familiar to anyone who has ever trained a puppy: punishment must be consistent and immediate, in order to maintain a clear linkage between transgression and consequences. Alm began by assembling 34 probationers chosen because their profiles suggested they were especially incorrigible. He told them: "Everybody in this courtroom wants you to succeed on probation. But for you not to be in prison means you are making a deal with me to follow the rules. If you don't want to follow the rules, tell me now, and I will send you to prison."
The rules were simple: each probationer had to call in to the courthouse every weekday to find out whether he was required to come in for an observed urine test. These tests occurred frequently, and if a probationer ever failed a test or failed to report for a test or a meeting with his probation officer, he was locked away for two days and hauled before the judge for immediate continued sentencing. The justice system under Alm was a consistent and unforgiving machine, dispensing instant punishment for every transgression. The effect was to make life on the outside a little more like life on the inside, with strict, regular monitoring of everyone in the system. If you used illegal drugs, you would be caught.