>Milhizer said in an emailed statement, ... that the communications feature is used “to inform the juvenile if the battery is low or that he or she entered an exclusionary zone where there is somebody or a place they must avoid.”
Bullshit. If that was all it was, then a warning alarm would be enough. They could also have had a warning alarm to indicate when to call into the monitoring center. Such a device would be so easy to operate, a dog could be trained to do it (http://www.iaadp.org/rescue-phone.html).
I don't know, building system that handles all complex cases and can respond intelligently to any 16 year old is hard. Having a human in the loop that calls you up and says, "Remember you have to plug the device in." is going to be a lot more effective than a blinking red light or an auditory beep when the batteries are low, (after all the user might be asleep when that happens), a human would be able to remind the user before the battery is low or even escalate to another human for example calling a parent to remind the child in person.
It is fair to question if this extra flexibility is worth the cost in privacy. Though personally I think the GPS monitor is a much bigger incursion on privacy, but I think we generally accept that the benefits outweigh the costs in this situation.f
If you don't think this for communication as described what do you think it is for?
I don't think covert surveillance makes sense because the wearer is already going feel surveilled (that is kinda the literal point of the device). Sarah Staudt, Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, obtusely suggests the device is for sexual deviants.
> The idea that an adult can turn on a listening device while a child is, say, in the bathroom or in their bedroom is not good.
I presume she is referring to the fact this is where children masterbate/have sex, as otherwise listening to a person sleep or use the bathroom really is not interesting or particularly hard to do (though if you do that is kinda creepy).
Anyways, this feels like way too much work if you just want to listen to 16 year old sexy-time, and the decision makers (like the mayor or chief prosecutor) isn't even going be in a position where they get to abuse the system to do that.
Perhaps this is a form of public corruption? Build an unneeded system in exchange for kickbacks this feels the most plausible but I don't see anything here that would make this more likely the case for the system mentioned in the article over any random public contract.
Just wondering as to why these devices are used to begin with? They don't prevent someone from re-offending or disappearing by just removing the device and destroying it, so why use it in the first place?
If someone can be trusted to not re-offend nor disappear then just trust them without the device, if someone can't be trusted then how is this device going to change anything? They'll just get rid of it and disappear at the earliest opportunity anyway.
I don’t agree with your premises. These aren’t elite criminals. They can’t flee the country or go into hiding. For the most part they’re low level offenders that run in bad crowds and made some bad decisions. But they still live in the community and are dependent on it. It is not hard to believe that a constant auditory monitor would change their behavior patterns.
It isnt so much about the kid wearing the device as it as about the environment the kid is hanging around in. the idea of acoustic monitoring is a slippery slope, and is rife with zero days, also sounds like it could be dangerous to the wearer, to be somewhere, and have a government agent call up while a bunch of thugs are present, thugs who now know that kid has a monitor, that a] records a GPS track b] has a microphone that heard what they were saying c] has been recording everything for how long? d] the kids a rat, punish him!
If you get arrested and probated as a result of your friends instigations then you need new friends so the shunning may be good but the physical retaliation risk is another.
Is it even true that more surveillance = lower costs / safer streets?
Regardless, this program should be struck down on constitutional grounds as you're almost guaranteed to infringe on the rights of 3rd parties when listening in on minors of all people. Totally absurd.
I have doubts about that. These spy devices don't actually prevent anyone from re-offending, and if anything could give the state a false sense of security (I can't imagine it being too difficult to take off the device without it noticing, as to make it look like everything is fine when you're actually on the run).
The title is a little more clickbaty than what it is. It's an ankle monitor for when kids are on house arrest for juvenile crimes.
> On March 29, court officials in Chicago strapped an ankle monitor onto Shawn, a 15-year-old awaiting trial on charges of armed robbery. They explained that the device would need to be charged for two hours a day and that it would track his movements using GPS technology. He was told he would have to be given permission to leave his house, even to go to school. But he found out that through his monitor, officers wouldn’t just be able to track his location, as most electronic monitors do. They would also be able to speak—and listen—to him.
and
> In January, Cook County, home of Chicago, awarded a contract to the electronic monitoring company Track Group, which will lease 275 ankle monitors to keep tabs on children awaiting trial.
“Kids” awaiting trial for armed robbery. (The infantilization of teenagers is ridiculous. For most of human history, young men at 15 were fighting wars. If you’re old enough to rob someone with a gun, you’re not a “kid.” Under certain circumstances it also may not be reasonable to treat you like an adult for purposes of the law, but calling the accused a “kid” is a disingenuous way to try to downplay the seriousness of his conduct.)
> For most of human history, young men at 15 were fighting wars. If you’re old enough to rob someone with a gun, you’re not a “kid.”
The hormonal peaks and incompletely developed executive function that made male adolescents excellent pawns in violent policy (and also contributes to their engagement in violent crime, often as similar pawns) is exactly part of them substantively being a kid.
> I'm sure the relatives of people murdered by incompletely developed executive functions understand completely ...
Lex talionis, one of the oldest principals of justice, came about as a limitation on retribution specifically because giving “relatives of people murdered” an excessive role in deciding the application of justice was recognized millennia ago as a fatal mistake for any kind of orderly society.
> I'm reminding the people commenting here that these "children" are being punished specifically because they have done things of real consequence that have negatively impacted society.
If this was a punishment for an offense, it would be unconstitutional as a violation of the right to trial.
If it is a condition of pre-trial release, it is would appear to be unconstitutional as a violation of due process, because this appears to be an arbitrary executive substitution of equipment with substantially different function, not part of the terms imposed by the court.
> The alternative is juvenile detention.
No, the alternative is pretrial release with GPS monitoring without audio surveillance as they were apparently actually assigned and as was done before the switch of equipment.
> But no, keep going on with the out of touch "awww, those poor innocent angels" crap.
I don't think anyone here has suggested that the children involved are categorically substantively innocent, though as this is pretrial monitoring they are categorically legally presumed innocent.
> Words seem trite in describing what follows when your husband is murdered in your presence, when your father is stripped from your life. The horror, the agony, the emptiness, the despair, the chaos, the confusion, the sense—perhaps temporary but perhaps not—that one’s life no longer has any purpose, the doubt, the hopelessness. There are no words that can possibly describe it, and all it entails. - testimony of J. Michael Luttig (former federal judge whose father was murdered by Napoleon Beazley, who was at the time 17).
We should have sympathy for victims, without letting them be in charge of policy decisions. That pain leads to the opposite of rationality. It’s up there with “think of the children” arguments in terms of harm that can be done.
12-year-olds stick people up. Young teenagers don't have fully-developed brains; it's probably "easier" for them to do this stuff, not harder. I have a hard time with the idea that you really think someone stops being a "kid" just because they commit a crime.
Recruiting a 15-year-old to fight in an armed conflict, by the way, is an action that has a name: "war crime".
I don't think anyone past the age of puberty is a "kid." It may not be fair in any given circumstance to treat them like adults, but they're not children either. Societies have long recognized that fact. (There is a reason in Judiasm the Bar Mitzvah is at age 13.)
There is a difference between improving on our history, and denying the underlying facts of the universe that led people in history to adopt certain customs. The former might be not sending 15-year olds off to fight the neighboring tribe. That is progress. The latter would be denying that a 15-year old is fully capable of horrific violence, and deeming him a "child." That is foolish.
Where's the line for you? Who is or isn't a "kid"? Is it just criminals that lose their kid status? Is it because they used a gun? What about an 8 year old that kills someone with a gun (either on purpose or accidentally) are they kids?
I think, as someone in my 30's, that pointing at a group of humans who are somewhere between middle school and college age and saying "those kids over there" makes sense.
Ask any developmental psychologist and they'll tell you: the brain is still developing, and 15 year olds are fucking idiots when it comes to long term consequences factoring into their decision making. "For most of human history" is a useless example because of all the other terribly stupid shit we did "for most of human history".
FOH with this "I decide who is a kid" nonsense, as if a bunch of law-abiding white kids of the same age wouldn't be called kids by most sane people.
15 year olds are not, and never have been, "children." They're adolescents. We have long recognized that people of that age are distinct from both children and adults in that they're capable of a wide variety of (often destructive) adult behaviors, but aren't put together enough to be fully accountable for that. That's fine--that's why the law tackles culpability for adolescents on a case-by-case basis.
Calling them "children" is both inaccurate, and a rhetorically sneaky way to mitigate culpability, responsibility, and agency. Controlling adolescents is one of society's most important functions, precisely because of the mismatch between destructive potential and impulse control. Society thus expects adolescents to control their behavior. It might give them more leeway in that regard, but they are not (and should not be) treated like children, who generally are held harmless for their misconduct.
> 15 year olds are not, and never have been, "children." They're adolescents.
“Children” does not now generally exclude adolescents, but extends to all pre-adults. We have terms that are more specific that do exclude adolescents, but “children” isn't generally one of them (though in certainly contexts the term might have special definitions.)
(Historically, it may havenexclude some or all adolescents, but that's because in most cultures, adult included some or all adolescents.)
> Controlling adolescents is one of society's most important functions,precisely because of the mismatch between destructive potential and impulse control.
Arguably, but then directly contradicted by:
> Society thus expects adolescents to control their behavior
Does society deem control of adolescents an important social function because it expects that adolescents lack adequate impulse control given their destructive potential or does it not see such a gap and expect that they have adequate impulse control for self-containment? Your second statement cannot be a consequence of the first, it is an incompatible expectation.
"Children" including adolescents is a very new (and very pernicious) idea.
> Does society deem control of adolescents an important social function because it expects that adolescents lack adequate impulse control given their destructive potential or does it not see such a gap and expect that they have adequate impulse control for self-containment?
There is nothing contradictory. Society holds children harmless because they're not generally cognitively capable of distinguishing right from wrong. Adolescents are, and are expected to behave. Society acknowledges that adolescents often have problems actually doing the right thing, but doesn't treat that as an excuse that mitigates culpability, as for children. Instead, they tailor punishment on a case-by-case basis to accommodate that fact. (Also, historically, they put adolescents to work, to reduce the avenues for misbehavior. Idle hands and whatnot.)
Adolescents are not, as a general rule, expected to have the cognitive faculties of adults, which is why they aren't usually tried as adults, why they can't vote, why they can't buy alcohol, and why they can't drive cars without additional rules (in graduated license states).
I am a former high school teacher working with Chicago kids age 15-22 (yes). I don't know about you, but they're children to me. They are simply not equipped with enough information to make rational choices in a system that has either by design or evolution _completely failed them_.
A child is someone who is not cognitively capable of distinguishing right from wrong. A 15-22 year old is fully capable of doing that. They may have a hard time fighting various pressures and doing the right thing, but that's a qualitatively different issue. (And in fact, most adolescents are perfectly capable of doing that too.)
> So the changes that happen between 18 and 25 are a continuation of the process that starts around puberty, and 18 year olds are about halfway through that process. Their prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed. That's the part of the brain that helps you to inhibit impulses and to plan and organize your behavior to reach a goal.
> And the other part of the brain that is different in adolescence is that the brain's reward system becomes highly active right around the time of puberty and then gradually goes back to an adult level, which it reaches around age 25 and that makes adolescents and young adults more interested in entering uncertain situations to seek out and try to find whether there might be a possibility of gaining something from those situations.
That doesn't say that adolescents can't distinguish right from wrong (which is what I said). That says that adolescents often lack the impulse control to do the right thing consistently.
To give you an example. My six year old doesn't really understand why she shouldn't eat junk food. She can kind of understand that she shouldn't do it, but the "why" is beyond her. Thus if she eats a bunch of junk food, it's not her fault, it's my fault. "Children" are held harmless because they lack a basic prerequisite for culpability: the ability to truly distinguish between right and wrong.
Having the cognitive ability to distinguish right from wrong, but lacking the impulse control to do the right thing is different. I know I shouldn't eat junk food, and I'm fully capable of understanding why. But I have trouble doing the right thing. If I eat a bunch of junk food, it's my fault. I am culpable, not my mom.
Calling someone a "child" is to negate their culpability. That's not an appropriate label for an adolescent. If lacking impulse control negated culpability, I'd suspect you'd find that a lot of adult criminals had poor impulse control. That doesn't make them "children." (Contrarywise, when it is demonstrated that an adult lacks the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, that does negate their culpability, in the same manner as for children.)
Kids do things all the time that they're not ready for, or are above their maturity. They lack full control, context and understanding of their environment and direction, so they shouldn't be seen as adults just because they're emulating adult actions.
Let's just fast forward 10 years and deploy these to everyone because if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. That's what they keep telling me!
What's more damaging to the future of these kids? An ankle bracelet or juvenile detention?
It seems easy to have a knee jerk reaction to this, but you have to understand that these ankle bracelets aren't being just randomly slapped on innocent kids. They're being placed on kids that have committed crimes or are awaiting trial. This is a lot better than the alternative to getting locked away where worse things can happen to them.
This and the other front-page article about the prison video call system makes me wonder, just who are these engineers that are helping build this kind of evil systems? What's the difference between them and some war criminal "just following orders"?
This article shows many issues with society but the title is super click-baity. It doesn't mention that it is talking about juvenile offenders, leaving the reader to assume Chicago is picking arbitrary children and tracking them. Furthermore, the main point of the article is not about GPS monitors, as those are already long accepted, as a condition of release, but instead about a two-way auto-pick-up call system built into the device, and the fact those calls are recorded.
Also lot of the issues they talk about go beyond the main privacy focused thrust behind adding a two wall call system to GPS tracking bracelets. How kids can get re-arrested because they forgot to charge the device, or are humiliated and effectively drop out of school because the device beeps in class, or are unable to eat because they are not permitted to leave their house which has no food because their family is poor.
These are real issues and deserves more attention, it is a shame that we only see because there is a clickbait headline. The problem isn't this specific feature being added to these devices, but rather a larger "emergent system" that is the result of many individuals and organizations acting independently and in a self interested fashion. As a society we have not managed to ensure the moral character of those with power over other people.
Technology isn't the cause or the solution to this problem because the problem is the people. People will find ways use things to be cruel or kind to each other regardless of of if that thing is latest advances in telecommunications or just fist sized rock.
"To the court’s knowledge, no probation officer has used the device in violation of the law"
Which implies, they can, they just haven't yet or no one has caught them.