In recent years the government has responded to the public's clamor to "get tough on crime" by sending many more criminals to jail for many more years. This has resulted in a 150% increase in prison population from 1981-1991. Construction of space for these prisoners has lagged far behind the growth of their population and, as a result, our nation is experiencing massive prison overcrowding and massive spending by the government on the penal system.

We propose to use technology to monitor minimum-security prisoners, or those awaiting trial, as an alternative to keeping them in jail. The Global Positioning System is a series of satellites that, when used with a receiver, can tell a person of their location longitudinally and latitudinally. By affixing these receivers to some criminals we could then double the location information back to the satellites on the same beam and from the satellites send it to a receiving station run by a penal system. Thus authorities would be aware of the location of a prisoner they are monitoring. If a schedule is worked out for each criminal as to where and when they are allowed to be so as to minimize their potential to commit a crime, then authorities could be notified when a schedule was broken.

This system would save money for the government and allow criminals to be productive members of society while still putting some restrictions on them. It alleviates a major problem and makes everyone's lives easier and safer. s



Students: Ben Fritz f Ryosuke Kawatsuji f Munehiro Matsumura

Teacher-Advisor: Anthony De Cristofaro