(The Center Square) — Several recently established laws meant to better enforce electronic monitoring for individuals on parole or out on bond have left lawmakers and law enforcement unsatisfied.
The state’s electronic monitoring framework remains “fragmented” across multiple statutes and may lead to “inconsistencies in enforcement and reporting and gaps in oversight,” according to a House resolution. It also says uniform guidelines are needed to ensure the “prompt reporting of violations to law enforcement.”
“The laws just aren’t strong enough,” Rep. Timothy Kerner, R-Lafitte, told The Center Square.
In response, Kerner is asking for suggestions from sheriffs, district attorneys, corrections officials, public defenders, and electronic monitoring providers in an attempt to improve how the Department of Justice tracks offenders and responds when they violate the terms of their release.
Kerner pointed to countless examples where an offender had violated the conditions of their ankle monitor, in some cases dozens of times, but no action was taken. “People are dying,” Kerner said, noting that one person had accumulated 40 violations.
One example cited by Kerner involved Ja’Maarion Banks, who was arrested in May in New Orleans on charges including armed robbery and carjacking, three months after being released on electronic monitoring. Even two days after his arrest, New Orleans police still did not have any access to the data logged by the ankle monitor.
That data could have told investigators where Banks was before, during and after the alleged crimes, whether the monitor had been removed, tampered with or lost signal; and whether supervising officials received alerts before his arrest.
In a robbery or carjacking investigation, GPS records can also help police compare a suspect’s movements with crime-scene locations, victim statements, or surveillance footage.
“There is zero transparency, zero proactive work, zero coordination, zero clarity,” said Matthew Dennis, President of the Association of Supervised Ankle Monitoring Providers, otherwise known as ASAP.
Over the past two years, a couple of laws have been passed to provide for stronger oversight not just of offenders, but of ankle monitor providers.
In 2024, Act 746 required electronic monitoring providers to register with the court and sheriff in each parish where they operate. The law also required providers to submit monthly reports to courts and report certain violations, including tampering, battery loss, loss of communication or entry into an exclusion zone. Under that version, providers had one day to report violations to the bail agent and court.
Lawmakers returned to the issue in 2025 with Act 416, which strengthened the notice requirements. Providers must now report verified violations to the bail agent, law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and the court immediately, and no later than 30 minutes after verifying a violation notice.
This year, lawmakers returned to focus on offenders now requiring that adults on electronic monitoring must pay the cost themselves.
But none of this is likely to address the “fragmented” sort of legal and communicative landscape described by Kerner’s resolution.
Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, who has authored some of the current monitoring laws, said in an interview that when she requested data from ankle monitoring companies on whether they had notified the courts and the Sheriffs department, she found that those companies had done their due diligence, but that law enforcement hadn’t followed up quickly enough.
But other stakeholders point the finger in other directions, sometimes at the ankle monitoring providers or sometimes at the courts.
In Baton Rouge, District Attorney Hillar Moore recently subpoenaed several of the city’s monitoring providers, saying that they had not been reporting violations soon enough.
Jill Ann Dennis, who helps lead a monitoring company responsible for offenders in New Orleans, said that Kerner’s resolution is meant to address these conflicting accounts of responsibility and oversight.
“So what we need is an oversight program. If you’re going to investigate GPS, then you need to have the whole picture,” Dennis told The Center Square. “That means you need every provider to put every offender they activate into the offender management system so that we know who the providers are and who they’re supervising. And then from there, report every violation, close out every alert in the system.”
