ST. LOUIS, MO—The Missouri Office of State Court Administrators (OSCA) has selected SCRAMx (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitors) as the sole transdermal alcohol monitoring technology approved to receive OSCA funding to monitor the state’s treatment court offenders. The programs included in the award include Adult Drug Court, Juvenile Drug Court, Family Drug Court, Reintegration Court, Veterans Court and DWI Court.
OSCA released an RFP for alcohol monitoring technologies in January in an effort to formalize the state’s expectations and requirements for alcohol monitoring technologies, both in terms of cost and performance. Qualifying technologies had to meet a number of specific criteria to be eligible, including showing case law where the technology has met the Daubert standard of admissibility—the most stringent standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure the validity of scientific evidence.
SCRAMx is an ankle bracelet, worn 24/7, that actually samples an offender’s perspiration every 30 minutes in order to ensure compliance with court-ordered sobriety. Missouri was one of the first states to adopt the technology back in 2004, and to-date more than 6,000 offenders have been monitored with SCRAMx statewide. There are just under 590 offenders on SCRAMx daily in Missouri. According to Mike Smith, president of Eastern Missouri Alternative Sentencing Services (EMASS) in St. Louis, OSCA’s selection of SCRAMx opens up a fairly substantial market opportunity to increase the use of the monitors throughout the state. “SCRAMx is the sole transdermal technology approved for OSCA funding,” says Smith, whose company has monitored nearly 4,000 of Missouri’s SCRAMx offenders in the eastern part of the state. “The offender-pay model can be problematic of offenders in the state’s treatment courts. This award allows for state funds, when available, to supplement program costs so that these courts have the opportunity to utilize the most stringent alcohol monitoring in order to help manage and rehabilitate these high-risk offenders,” he says.
EMASS, Private Probation Services in St. Joseph and Electronic Sentencing Alternatives in the Kansas City area were the three private companies selected to provide SCRAMx services to the state’s treatment courts. The contract goes in to effect on July 1.
About Alcohol Monitoring Systems, Inc.
Established in 1997, Alcohol Monitoring Systems, Inc. (AMS) is the world’s largest provider of Continuous Alcohol Monitoring technology. AMS manufactures SCRAMx, which uses non-invasive transdermal analysis to monitor alcohol consumption and integrates home detention monitoring into a single anklet. SCRAMx fully automates the alcohol testing and reporting process, providing courts and community corrections agencies with the ability to continuously monitor alcohol offenders, increase offender accountability and assess compliance with sentencing requirements and treatment guidelines. SCRAM has monitored nearly 180,000 offenders in 48 states since 2003. AMS employs 126 people across the U.S. and is a privately-held company headquartered in Littleton, Colorado.