A US-based electronic monitoring company that provides prisons and law enforcement agencies with tracking and surveillance technologies.
Track Group, Inc.—formerly known as SecureAlert from 1995 to 2014—is an Illinois-based company that manufactures electronic monitoring and tracking devices and related technologies, including GPS ankle shackles, voice biometric tools, tracking software, and smartphone-based supervision apps.
Track Group sells its devices primarily to U.S. law enforcement agencies for use in monitoring and surveilling people on parole or probation. For example, the company has provided its GPS monitoring devices, biometric voice verification tools, and other technologies to state prison authorities in Indiana and Virginia. The company also owns electronic monitoring subsidiaries in Canada, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Israel, and has contracted with law enforcement agencies in these countries, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Since at least 2013, for example, Track Group has been the exclusive provider of electronic monitoring devices to Chile’s national prison authority.
Similar to other electronic monitoring or “e-carceration” companies, Track Group shifts the costs of 24/7 monitoring and surveillance to the monitored population by charging “user-funded” installation and maintenance fees. In Marion County, Ind., for example, Track Group charges individuals a $50 installation fee and $14 daily monitoring fee—a total of up to $420 per month. Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, has contracted Track Group for GPS electronic monitoring services since 2008.
In January 2019, Cook County, Ill., home of Chicago, awarded Track Group a three-year contract for the pre-trial monitoring and surveilling over 275 children. The company’s GPS ankle shackles not only track movement, but can also record the monitored individual. Track Group’s ReliAlert XC3 device allows company employees and criminal courts to call monitored individuals at any time for two-way communication. The monitored youth cannot decline incoming calls, and company employees have testified in court that the device’s listening capabilities can be activated without warning. This has raised alarms that Track Group ostensibly allows adults to “turn on a listening device while a child is, say, in the bathroom or in their bedroom.”
In July 2018, Track Group was awarded a one-year contract with the Puerto Rican Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide electronic monitoring technology for all people awaiting trial or on probation. In 2018, Track Group’s insurance company settled a lawsuit alleging that the company’s gross negligence resulted in a woman’s death in Puerto Rico. The company has provided electronic monitoring technology to Puerto Rico’s prison authority since at least 2012.