CLEARWATER, Fla. – Ankle bracelet monitors, once reserved for people on bail or parole, are now being marketed to parents of unruly teens.
Clearwater-based Tampa Bay Monitoring is making waves—and headlines—for its new ankle monitoring service for troublesome teens. The same company provides the GPS tracking technology for court-mandated programs across the Bay area.
On its website, the company claims enough parents made requests for a similar device. The bracelet features a strap the company claims is hard to remove and a speaker that allows parents to verbally contact their kids.
For now, the devices are only available to local families and are monitored by Tampa Bay Monitoring for a monitoring fee. Owner Frank Kopczysnki says he’s had nearly 50 families use the service in the past two years.
The service costs $10 per day.
In response to an onslaught of criticism from recent headlines, the company posted on its website the procedure a parent must go through before obtaining a monitor for their children.
Only teens who’ve “already been involved in some sort of illicit activities” will qualify, according to the company, and each family interested in obtaining a device must meet with Tampa Bay Monitoring to discuss their concerns and objectives.
“Tampa Bay Monitoring will not issue a device to parents whose child has simply been a little disruptive, or got bad grades, or to parents who are just worried that their daughter likes the wrong boy,” the company writes on its site.
“The initial meeting with the experienced staff at Tampa Bay Monitoring helps weed out ‘helicopter’ parents who simply want to control their teen’s movements.”
Kopczynski says it's all meant to be a stopgap until parents can seek the necessary help for their children. He likens it to a smoke detector.
“It detects smoke it’s to warn you," he said. "It’s not going to put out the fire.”
But Lewis Stephens, founder of I Support Youth Inc., a St. Petersburg-based group that works with at-risk youth, says the stopgap should be the parents.
"I don't care how many ankle monitors you put on a youth. If they want to go get into trouble they're going to find a way to get into trouble," Stephens said. "No matter what ankle monitor you have, we're still going to be dealing with kids who are going to be lost."
No court order is required for a parent to place an ankle monitor on their child. It's not against the law either.
The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2012 prohibits anyone from “collecting, receiving, recording, obtaining, or disclosing … geo-location information from an electronic communications device” of any individual with their direct consent and authorization. However, the act provides an exception for parents (or legal guardians) to locate a minor child.
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