Ellington

Hinds County has received $80,000 to use GPS technology to track juvenile offenders under house arrest. The county Board of Supervisors voted today to accept a one-year grant from the state Department of Public Safety that will allow it to take over the monitoring program from Court Programs, Inc., which has handled monitoring for the past three years for the county's youth court.

The grant allows the county to hire Court Programs' Timothy Stallworth to oversee the program.

Under the monitoring program, the county can remotely monitor juvenile offenders, rather than housing them in the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center. A GPS-equipped band on the offender's ankle provides up-to-the-moment location information, alerting county officials if the offender does not make it to an appointment or job shift, or violates his or her house arrest.

The GPS program can save counties money while also preventing overcrowding of detention facilities, Stallworth said. Monitoring a juvenile can cost as little as $10 per day, compared to daily costs of $100 for holding them in a detention center.