The bill would create an offense for removing or disabling an electronic monitoring device that is required as a condition of house arrest, community supervision, parole, mandatory supervision, or release on bail. The offense would be a state jail felony, except that it would be a third degree felony if the individual is in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's super intensive supervision program.
Creating a new criminal offense may result in additional demands upon state and local correctional resources due to an increase in the number of individuals placed under supervision in the community or sentenced to a term of confinement.
While statewide population data do not exist for the number of individuals required to submit to electronic monitoring as a condition of house arrest or release on bail, data on the number of individuals on adult community supervision and parole supervision in an electronic monitoring program is available. In fiscal year 2022, the total number of adults served through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice parole division's electronic monitoring program and super-intensive supervision program were 9,799 and 4,257, respectively, and the total number of adults served through a community supervision electronic monitoring program was 957.
In fiscal year 2022, TDCJ reported a total of 1,127 parole warrants were executed and confirmed a monitor strap for an individual on parole supervision was cut or the warrant remains active following an alert for a cut strap that could not be immediately resolved. Statewide data on the number of incidents of electronic monitoring device tampering for other programs do not exist.
The impact on state correctional populations or on the demand for state correctional resources cannot be determined due to the lack of statewide data on the number of individuals required to submit to electronic monitoring as a condition of certain supervision and the number of individuals who knowingly removed or disabled a required electronic monitoring device.