The Rhode Island Department of Corrections’ Roberta Richman, Assistant Director for Rehabilitative Services, recently commended the administrators of the Department’s Community Confinement Unit for safely and efficiently transferring all of the monitoring equipment assigned to approximately 300 offenders on Electronic Monitoring Parole (EMP) to a new vendor. In her letter of commendation to Community Confinement Administrator Magdalena Picot, Parole Supervisor Lynn Gardiner, and Community Confinement Assistant Administrator Anne D’Alessio, Richman wrote, “As you well know, we could not afford to have any down time in our monitoring of these offenders so timing was critically important.”
Over the course of three days in March, every offender on an ankle bracelet was brought into the Pinel Building where Community Confinement and the Parole Unit are housed to remove old equipment and to be assigned new equipment. Richman wrote of the process, “The steady stream of orderly, well prepared offenders, the energetic, enthusiastic teams of Home Confinement counselors and Parole Officers, and the tracking and boxing of old and new equipment was most impressive.”
While there are only minor differences between the old and new equipment (the box is slightly smaller), Administrator Picot says that offenders have adapted easily. The transition has gone more smoothly than she expected. “There has been a real team effort with Parole and with all of the involved staff,” Picot notes.
Upon the recommendation of the State Purchasing Office, the switch to the new vendor, G.4S, was accomplished through the Western Consortium. This purchasing collaborative, which any state can opt to join, provides a better pricing structure.