After three incidents of drunken driving and seven months in jail, Jaime was required to wear a tether monitoring his location and submit to random blood-alcohol tests.
"It helped me to break those patterns of being out more and wanting to go the bars," said Jaime, a 2003 MSU graduate who was referred to The State News by Alcoholics Anonymous of Lansing. "It's kind of like being grounded."
Michigan courts are now moving to a newer tether system - an ankle bracelet that measures a person's blood-alcohol level at least every hour all day. In July, the Michigan Department of Corrections signed a three-year, $1.7 million contract with a Michigan company, House Arrest Services, to include the system at the circuit court level.
The system, called the Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor, or SCRAM, surrounds the person's ankle and tests the blood-alcohol level by sucking air out through pores in the skin.
"You can sometimes feel the actual vibrations of the unit," said Jon Ugval, director of operations at House Arrest Services. "It's barely anything."
Ugval said the company started offering it more than a year ago, 2,500 people have used the SCRAM system. He said about 500 people are using the system currently and the average length of use is 90 days.
The cost of the system is typically $12 a day and paid by the offender, Ugval said. If the offender consumes alcohol, the system knows, he said.
"We can do anything from contacting the court to dispatching the police," Ugval said.
The Department of Corrections is working to train its agents how to use the system and informing circuit court judges of the option when sentencing, said spokesman Russ Marlin.
"What we hope that what they would do is place them on this instead of sending them to prison, which would save us a prison bed," he said. "This is just another form of technology that targets a portion of the people."
Marlin said the majority of offenders who will be placed on the system will be third-time drunken drivers. This is a felony crime in the state of Michigan.
The East Lansing 54-B District Court has used the SCRAM system in the past year, but in moderation, said Nicole Evans, the chief probation officer for the city.
"For the most part, if we're going to test someone, we do it at random," Evans said. "We use house arrest as an alternative to incarnation. We try to use the resources that are available."
Evans said financial constraints, family obligations and the offender's past behavior are factored in when deciding what form of probation to use.
"What we get is people who try to beat the system; they've just been through house arrest," she said. "With this SCRAM technology, it's their sweat.
"There's less of a chance of violating or bypassing."
Having been closely monitored, AA member Jaime said the SCRAM system is a good idea, but in the end, the alcoholic makes the decision to kick the habit.
"Those work for short-term methods," he said. "The person has to have the desire to stop drinking."
