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Mick said he had trouble visiting his mother in her retirement home, because she worried about explaining why her son always wore a device on his leg. "She gets upset, and I can't say that I blame her," he said dejectedly. "It feels like it has grown into my skin sometimes." It seemed also to have grown into his brain.
Whatever its merits, the idea of increasing the number of free-range felons such as Mick is unlikely to make for good politics. Willie Horton still haunts the dreams of every aspiring politician. Even Steven Alm says it was largely his reputation as a former prosecutor and "hanging judge" that enabled him to institute HOPE, since no one could plausibly accuse him of being soft on crime. "I'm convinced this is one of those Nixon-in-China things," he explained. "If I hadn't been a career prosecutor, there's no way the law-enforcement people would have gotten on board."
Nevertheless, there are moves under way to experiment with HOPE-like programs outside Hawaii. In addition to the conversations Alm has held with Attorney General Holder, legislation introduced by Representatives Adam B. Schiff (a California Democrat) and Ted Poe (a Texas Republican) would establish a competitive grant program to provide seed money for HOPE-style probation systems. Small programs are in place in Nevada and Oregon, and Alaska launched its own effort this summer. And the market for monitoring devices seems destined to expand, as the technology involved becomes more widespread and hardware costs continue to fall. Already, I have an application on my iPhone that broadcasts my exact location to selected friends at all times. If I were ever convicted of a crime and forced to submit to GPS tracking, I would, in theory, need only to add my probation officer to my Google Friends list and keep my phone handy. (When I showed the app to BI's Jennifer White, she had trouble fathoming that anyone would use such a thing without a court order. "Do you keep that on all the time?" she asked suspiciously.) And with prison costs rising, and the pernicious effects of incarceration becoming clearer all the time, the problem of selling prisons without walls will presumably grow easier over time.