Right. But meanwhile when they turn 18, they haven't been in any trouble. They're good kids for all intents and purposes, but that information is still held for other people to have access, to law enforcement, even if, you know, things happen, as we heard mistaken identities, stuff like that. It's just disturbing to know that that data is still there. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: And I don't think we got the clearest answers in terms of what that looks like or what is in the contract and what can be shared or not shared and with what entity. I have not seen that contract. None of us here have seen that contract or the MOU in terms of what is being done with that data. What we learned today is that it's maintained for seven years.
Yeah, that's my thing. Because, you know, I grew up in the neighborhood where that's at and some of these kids are thinking about that. I'm going to be 18, it's going to be off my record, I could finally try to do something. If it's in the computer, then somebody has access to it and it's out there, you know what I'm saying. I'd just like to know maybe what are the parameters for somebody to actually look at that data after a person turns and supposedly their record supposed to be expunged. It's not supposed to be there anymore, but we still have this. What I'm saying -- and I'm not technical so I don't know. Why wouldn't we just delete their juvenile record out of -- now, I know data is always still there. But why would we not take that file 13 number, I guess it would be or whatever, and just delete it out of the system at 18, especially if somebody --
18 Councilmember, just to be clear the juvenile court jurisdiction goes up until age so the court can 21 retain jurisdiction and also even place children up until age 21. Secondly, there's a new law that went into effect in April of this year where juvenile records can be expunged after two years after a child completes court supervision or if there's an agreement between the prosecutor and the defense counsel, even sooner than that.
I think part of the concern is the data. I mean, we have to identify what the data is. The data, it's a contract between the First Judicial District and the identified vendor. I think we're talking about coordinate and longitude and lateral to data that's kept in a different location. CJIS and CREA, there are different federal statutes that terms what data needs to be maintained. Subject to an expungement petition that we litigate, the various law enforcement authorities, the DC No., MC No., PP No. data tracking is all identified and removed. This data would be separate and distinct from that, and I don't think we have a full handle on exactly where that information is or how that is, probably subject to a different federal criminal justice either CREA or CJIS --
That's what I'm getting at. We don't know what happens to that data. And I'm just trying to see if I understood correctly. So that data, like in our stuff, like your stuff, that number, you would get rid of it at a certain point --
-- two years after the thing. That's my concern. This is -- not you, you're a government agency. You're bound by oath, by a bunch of other stuff to hold that data to yourself. That's confidentiality, whatever you want to call it. But my concern comes with private companies holding data on our children.
And, Councilman, just my theory when you're talking about hitting a delete button and finding that stuff, I think you're looking for either a needle in a haystack or a needle in a needle stack as to what that data represents. If you were to go to Broad and Market six years from now, you may be able to glean back what that information is as to did someone have a GPS monitor at Broad and Market at 1:15 p.m. on October 29, 2025. No one has aggregated that data, developed that data or knows what that is. So I don't think it's a matter of you can hit a delete button and find what that is. Everything that we've identified personal to the individual use --
Yeah, but they would have the data and that data is assigned to the monitor, so then they would also have that person's other information that's in the computer with that data. When you, you know, I'm not the most tech savvy guy. Rue's our Chair. But I would say when you hit a couple of buttons and you put in a number, just like we do to track constituents and stuff like that, that's where my concern comes in. My concern comes in after a kid that has been adjudicated, you know, they're done. Whether they were convicted, did their probation, they're now 18 and they haven't gotten any trouble, it's supposed to be a fresh start for them. That is what I'm getting at. But there's a private company holding on to our kids' data for seven years. A lot of things can happen. People get hacked. Things happen, you know what I'm saying. So that's where my concern is. I'm a grandparent now, you know what I mean. So thank you.
While the First Judicial District is still here, I'd like to request, formally request from the Joint Committee a copy of the contract between you and Track Group, the contract or any MOU, any agreement between the two parties. Thank you. Okay. Are there any further questions for this panel? (No response.)
Hearing none, thank you all very much for being here. CHIEF DEFENDER HUDSON: Thank you very much.
Appreciate you. And, Mr. Byrd, can you call the next panel, the last panel.
Panel 4, Academic and Research Perspectives: Kate Weisburd, University of California, College of Law San Francisco, our virtual panelist.
Thank you so much for being here and we're sorry for the delay. It's been a fruitful discussion. I hope you've been here for a lot of it. And please state your name and proceed with your testimony.
Thank you so much and I really am honored to speak with you all today. I have listened from the very beginning and have found this conversation very enlightening and very inspiring, especially I applaud the young people for their testimony. It was very inspiring and it took a lot of courage on their part. So I'm a Law professor at the University of California San Francisco. I research the use of surveillance technology on young people in juvenile court as well as adults. And previous to joining academia, I represented young people in juvenile court so I have direct experience working with and now studying the use of electronic monitoring in juvenile court. So let me just briefly describe, and I'll keep my comments really short. I know that you are at the end of your hearing so I'm very cognizant of time. But let me just offer some thoughts on what we know and what we don't know about the use of electronic monitoring in juvenile court. So what we know is that monitoring, and we heard this today, is not a harmless alternative to incarceration. The web of rules and requirements can cause stigma, social isolation, disrupt family relationships and jeopardize really important outcomes such as education and employment. We also know that electronic monitoring is a very, very poor fit for young people. It often sets up young people to fail, especially young people with disabilities and young people experiencing housing and family instability. It's virtually impossible, as you heard today, for any one of us to follow all of these complex rules. And it's especially hard for young people, and especially hard for young people with disabilities or young people facing other challenges or instability in their life. The requirements, I hope that you do also ask for a copy of the rules that young people are required to sign and abide by. I think that seeing the rules themselves will be for you -- the Council to see the rules would be very insightful, I think. But these rules, you know, charging your device for two hours a day, being on house arrest as well as the requirement to get pre-approval to do anything outside of the home, this means that young people cycle in and out of custody not for new criminal offenses but for technical violations. And I should say, earlier you heard about the 30% and that was a really illuminating number. 30% of young people being detained for GPS violations, but don't lose sight of the fact that they're also young people being detained for probation violations or for violations of pre-trial release conditions. So you have to remember, of course, that GPS is part of a larger ecosystem of surveillance. And so, there are even more young people going into custody for technical violations that might have been picked up by the GPS but aren't necessarily categorized as GPS violations. We also know that electronic monitoring was not designed for young people. This is a tool that was designed to use in the adult system and it was simply cut and pasted into juvenile court with no regard to the unique needs and challenges that young people face or what we now know about adolescent development. We know that the rules associated with monitoring, including being on house arrest, makes it really hard for young people to work, attend family events or engage in other pro-social activities. This virtual solitary confinement can lead to depression, anxiety and social isolation. And even when young people are permitted to leave their home, their monitors are often visible and audio functions emanate buzzes, beeps or verbal commands, as they do in Philadelphia. These features undermine the otherwise confidential nature of juvenile court and lead to feelings of stigma, shame and anxiety. Let me say a few words about what we don't know about electronic monitoring. First -- sorry, there's two more points about what we do know. We also know that this technology is not terribly reliable.
There are reports of the technology not working in big cities, in elevators, in basements, causing false alerts, as you heard from the young person today. That is not an isolated event. I researched this issue all over the country and false alerts are a real thing and the technology is far from perfect. It is also really the implementation of the rules is actually complicated. Getting pre-approval to do things like a job interview is not easy. Often young people have to coordinate between their parents, the GPS probation officer and their regular probation officer, and that much coordination is hard for anyone, especially young people. The last thing we know is the use of the data, and I'm so excited to hear the conversation about the data because I think these are really critical questions. I will say that sharing GPS with law enforcement is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, unless the police have a warrant. And I heard the District Attorney's Office saying that they get a warrant. But what was not said is that the police are obtaining a warrant before they use GPS data in crime scene correlation investigations. And so, that is something we know happens all the time and is, I think, troubling. What we don't know, there is no reliable empirical evidence that electronic monitoring furthers the rehabilitative goals of juvenile court as compared to actual inperson support such as counseling, job training, mentoring or assistance with transportation to court or other appointments. There is no reliable empirical evidence that the use of monitoring correlates with lower incarceration rates or other positive case outcomes such as school attendance or lower rates of re-arrest, and there is no reliable evidence that monitoring is only being used on young people who'd otherwise remain in custody. And I think this is really important to think about. Who are the young people being placed on these monitors. And in a world without monitors, would every single one of them be detained? I think the answer is probably no in most places. So let me end with some recommendations. I should say that I did submit written testimony and my recommendations are in that written testimony. The state of California recently passed a new law limiting and regulating the use of electronic monitoring in juvenile court, and I linked the text of that law. If you want to see an example of what one jurisdiction has done to address electronic monitoring in juvenile court, they are the only state so far to have done that. But it is a good model, I think so. Some quick recommendations: One, I think monitoring needs to be limited to young people who would genuinely otherwise remain in custody. Monitoring should not be used as a default. The question about data is really important. I would add to the request for data, knowing if young people are being put on a monitor as a default when they are released from custody and/or if they are put on a monitor as a response to a violation of probation. Those are two data points that I am assuming we don't have yet but are really important. The second recommendation is that no young person should be on a monitor for months at a time. The California law limits the presumption. The presumption is 30 days max for a young person to be on a monitor. Third, effective programming should always be prioritized over monitoring. Monitoring is simply not a substitute for programming. Fourth, monitoring rules should be individually tailored and especially accommodate young people with disabilities. To not accommodate young people with disabilities is actually a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Five, pro-social and pro-family. Pro-social and pro-family activities should be pre-approved and should not require young people or their families to get permission every single time they want to go to a job interview or go to a family reunion.
Six, we need to eliminate reincarceration for certain technical violations like failing to charge their device. Seven, police must obtain a warrant before accessing GPS data as part of crime investigation. Eight, I think we need to scrutinize the monitoring devices themselves to ensure that they are reliable and not malfunctioning. And nine, we need to collect better, better data. And I won't repeat what's been said. Just to echo that, I think that's really important, really important. The 10th recommendation is to ban the audio features. Many states don't have audio features. These audio features really do jeopardize the confidential nature of juvenile court and are pretty problematic, especially if they have a microphone that can listen to what young people are saying. And finally, I was so happy to hear about the idea of convening a working group, including young people, to talk about what exactly the purpose of electronic monitoring should be in juvenile court. So thank you so much for listening to my testimony and I'm happy to answer questions and also happy and very much understand if you want to be done with the hearing as well.
Thank you very much. That was incredibly helpful. I do have one question. So this is Councilmember Rue Landau. I'm the Chair of our Tech Committee and just want to get an understanding if you know any details about some of these companies that are holding this data? Are there many companies doing the GPS monitoring around the country? We're using Track Group. Is that the only one people use? And also, a little bit more, if you know anything about the audio piece because we have heard people concerned that folks, probation officers are listening to their conversations without them knowing it?
Great question. So there are a lot of companies in the market that sell electronic monitoring devices. So Track Group is definitely not the only one. There are some big conglomerate companies that sell these devices. Because of the recent change in administration, we're seeing the use of electronic monitoring go up pretty substantially, especially in the immigration context. So these companies are doing quite well and are selling a lot of devices right now. With respect to the audio features, many states don't -- there are devices that don't have those audio features. So here in California, for example, where I practiced in juvenile court there were lights and beeps, which, you know, present their own set of problems. But there was no audio feature in the sense that there was no microphone so that a probation officer couldn't talk to a young person through the microphone nor could they listen. So at the very least, I think that ideally the city should consider using devices that don't have microphones.
Just to follow up on the data itself, for the companies that are holding the data, what's your understanding of laws protecting the data and also what companies are doing with it?
Thank you. Sorry, I meant to answer that. So we don't know a lot because these companies are not covered by public records. So I've done extensive public record requests and looked at the contracts between private companies and municipalities all over the country, and often times the contracts are silent as to what happens to the data. And so, it's really impossible to know what's happening to the data within the private company itself. Presumably, they're not handing that data over to any type of law enforcement without a warrant. But literally, we have no 8 idea other than what the companies decide to tell us. We have no way of verifying that. However, the agencies and government municipalities, you know, courts have this data too. And so, I think that is an area where we could have more control. Because, for example, there could be clear rules and/or litigation that the data that at least probation has can't be shared with law enforcement absent a warrant. But we don't know much about what is happening with the data that is held by the private companies beyond what they're willing to share with us.
You know, it's interesting. Philadelphia, along with many other municipalities, now have body-worn cameras in their police department, but we hold our own data. And it is very interesting to me that we in Philadelphia are using an outside company to hold our data for our young people, many of whom might be innocent. Are there any jurisdictions that have purchased their own GPS monitoring systems and are holding their own data?
No. I mean, the problems that were described today are problems throughout the country, so this is not a uniquely Philadelphia problem in terms of the private companies holding the data and not knowing what is happening to that data.
Thank you so much. Any colleagues have any other questions? (No response.)
Thank you so much for being here. It was really helpful and your testimony was fantastic. We all read it and/or will read it.
Okay. Thank you, everybody. Mr. Byrd, is there anybody here for public comment?
There is no 19 one else signed up for public comment on this resolution.
Okay. So this concludes the panel testimony for this resolution. There's no individuals registered for public comment. So there being no 3 further questions from members of the Committee and no other witnesses to testify, is there anyone else present in the hearing we have failed to call and that wishes to offer testimony on the resolutions being considered today? (No response.)
Hearing none, I want to thank all the panels and witnesses for their participation today. We value your opinions. This concludes the public hearing on the committee. We will now recess this hearing until the call of the Chair. Thank you all very much for your attendance. (Joint Committees on Children & Youth and Technology and Information Services concluded at 1:35 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL