Some South Carolina lawmakers look to standardize the state’s home detention and electronic monitoring system. Right now the process is more or less left up to each jurisdiction. 

How the home detention system works is a person comes up for a bond hearing, a judge gives them a bond amount and they may add as an extra requirement electronic monitoring. But from there the procedure varies across the state, and this could mean less surveillance on those people out on bond.  

 

“Electronic monitoring is something that didn’t exist 30, 40 years ago,” Rep. Jay Jordan- (R) Florence said. As technology changes, so must our laws.  In South Carolina more jurisdictions use home detention to monitor people out on bond, and Jordan said the practice needs to be more uniform. 

“It’s kind of everybody is doing their own thing to some degree,” he said. “This seeks to get everybody more on the same page.”

Many counties in the state hire third-party companies to take care of electronic monitoring. Horry County is not one of them, but Solicitor Jimmy Richardson still notes a problem. 

 

“The more outside agencies you bring into it, the more that this law is watered down and loosened up,” Richardson said. He explained a third party may not check as often as law enforcement. The bill would create new procedures for those outside agencies. It reads, in part:

“… TO PROVIDE PROCEDURES FOR ASSESSING AND COLLECTING PRETRIAL RELEASE AND MONITORING FEES, AND TO PROVIDE STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES OF WHICH PRIVATE PROVIDERS MUST COMPLY WHEN SELECTED TO PROVIDE ELECTRONIC MONITORING SERVICES.”

“It’s everybody’s fear that an individual gets arrested, charged with a crime, they get on bond and commit another crime,” Jordan said. In 2016 Calvin Ford, a Myrtle Beach man out on home detention for attempted murder, was charged with two counts of murder in a double homicide case. 

“If you’re going to take advantage of this home detention service instead of sitting in jail, all home detention services have got to be run the same way,” Richardson said.

 

 The bill goes before a house subcommittee Thursday, and Jordan said he expects it to pass. After that it would go to the full judiciary committee.