Illinois Department of Corrections Selects BI Incorporated for GPS Offender Tracking

BI Incorporated announces it has won an award from the Illinois Department of Corrections to provide GPS offender monitoring technology for high-risk sexual offenders. The Illinois Department of Corrections will employ BI's ExacuTrack AT.

Boulder, CO (PRWeb) January 24, 2007 -- BI Incorporated, the nation's largest provider of offender monitoring systems and reentry services for community corrections, announces it has won an award from the Illinois Department of Corrections to provide GPS offender monitoring technology for high-risk sexual offenders. The Illinois Department of Corrections will employ BI's ExacuTrack AT, an active offender monitoring system that incorporates use of Global Positioning System technology.

BI has a longstanding relationship with the Illinois Department of Corrections for offender monitoring technology, monitoring services, and reentry services. In fact, today more than 2,600 offenders are monitored with BI's electronic monitoring systems in Illinois and another 680 are receiving reentry services at Illinois Parolee Spotlight Reentry Centers, operated by BI. Under terms of this new GPS award, finalized on Dec. 28, Illinois will use ExacuTrack AT to monitor 100 high-risk offenders immediately and up to 700 eventually. This award includes extensions that could reach through 2013.

"We are pleased to take over this contract for GPS offender monitoring for the state of Illinois," said Bruce Thacher, BI President. "The Department has made it clear that public safety is essential when monitoring and supervising paroled sex offenders. Our ExacuTrack AT system will be a valuable supervision tool for parole officers as they perform their duties."

ExacuTrack AT enables the Illinois Department of Corrections to know the location of criminal offenders released to community supervision, providing information to the supervising officer 24/7 via the Internet. Location is dependent upon satellite access and communication is dependent upon cellular coverage. As an active GPS offender monitoring system, ExacuTrack AT provides updates on offenders in near real-time increments. ExacuTrack AT will be used to fulfill the statutory requirements to install active GPS monitoring on certain classes of sexual offenders.

ExacuTrack AT includes four components:

• A transmitter attached to the offender's ankle

• A lightweight, portable GPS tracking unit that the offender wears on a belt or purse, or carries when leaving home

• A base station installed in the offender's residence

• A secure web interface that stores all offender data and schedules, enabling officers to view detailed reports and maps of where an offender has traveled in the community.

ExacuTrack AT enables parole officers to customize schedules, curfews, and boundaries -- also called inclusion and exclusion zones -- for each offender. When an alert is generated, an alert is forwarded to the supervising agency via pager, email, email-enabled cell phone or a combination of these methods. While an offender is monitored with ExacuTrack AT, the supervising officer is able transmit text messages to the individual at any time and receive acknowledgements that the offender has received the message.

Today, the Illinois Department of Corrections supervises more than 80,000 offenders, including incarcerated inmates and parolees living in the community. The Department also supervises 1,000 convicted sex offenders in the community. Those deemed sexual predators will be supervised with the GPS systems.

For more information, visit: http://www.bi.com/pdfs/ExacuTrackAT.pdf.

About BI Incorporated

Established in 1978, today BI Incorporated contracts with more than 1,000 governmental agencies nationwide to provide offender monitoring technology, supervision services from a national monitoring center, community-based treatment services, and reentry programs to adult and juvenile offenders in the community on parole, probation or pretrial release. (www.bi.com).

Contact: Monica Hook, BI Incorporated, 303-218-1230

# # #