TRACKING TEENS

This story is part of an ongoing series on youth justice. Part 1: An outlier in youth incarceration. Part 2: Reforms promised, then abandoned. Part 3: Womb-to-prison pipeline.

Kids in Philly call it being “on the band.” In recent years, the city’s juvenile justice system has rapidly expanded its use of GPS-equipped ankle monitors to enforce curfews and house arrest.

Today, Philadelphia is tracking teens’ whereabouts at a scale unmatched in any other U.S. city.

Court officials have billed the ankle monitors as a humane and cost-effective alternative to locking up teens in institutions that are expensive, plagued by abuse scandals, and linked to increased recidivism.

But an Inquirer examination of city and state records, along with interviews of teens, parents, lawyers and others involved in the justice system, found that the city’s GPS monitoring has quietly evolved into an aggressive surveillance program through which location data are turned over to law enforcement agencies without a warrant and used in investigations unrelated to the teens’ juvenile cases. The data sharing is happening amid an unprecedented expansion of monitoring, with little-understood consequences for either the teens or for public safety.

Civil rights and juvenile justice experts told The Inquirer that these practices violate state juvenile court confidentiality rules, as well as constitutional protections against warrantless searches.

“It‘s an excessive invasion of privacy,” said Marsha Levick, chief legal officer of the Juvenile Law Center, particularly for the roughly one-third of teens on GPS who have not been adjudicated delinquent and are presumed innocent. “I don’t think that because kids are on GPS they lose all of their Fourth Amendment and constitutional rights.”

Nicole El, chief of the children and youth justice unit at the Defender Association of Philadelphia, said she is increasingly concerned about both the widespread use of GPS on her clients and how the data are being used. She said GPS monitoring is being used for first-time offenders, teens charged only with nonviolent offenses, and teens who are not competent for court due to serious mental illness.

“It‘s kind of become the default for anyone released from detention,” she said.

Philadelphia court spokesperson Martin O’Rourke said the success of the GPS program is measured “by the youth’s ability to comply with the conditions of probation.” He declined to provide data showing how often teens on GPS monitors have successfully completed supervision.

He also defended the way in which data are shared with law enforcement agencies, saying their procedures comply with all relevant laws and court rules.

The only official document governing how the location data can be shared appears to be a 2020 agreement signed by then-Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Philadelphia administrative judge Margaret Murphy. That memorandum of understanding, which has not previously been made public, provides for information sharing on Gun Violence Task Force investigations into straw purchases — the purchase of guns on behalf of others. The agreement permits sharing juvenile probation records, including interviews, social media information, and geolocation data.

The information sharing, however, has extended beyond the task force to “multitudes of law enforcement agencies,” according to the most recent annual report from the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, as Philadelphia’s court system is officially known.

When a carjacking occurs, according to the report, the juvenile probation department’s GPS unit does not wait to be served a warrant, or even for probable cause to show that a monitored teen was involved. Instead, probation officials proactively analyze every teen’s GPS data for proximity to the crime and forward matches to police.

In 2023, officials referred 10 teens for investigation because they had been tracked near carjackings, according to the report.

Juvenile probation officials also share “insight on a youth’s routine and/or behavioral patterns” with law enforcement agencies, according to the report, and can “unarchive a youth’s GPS tracking location after their discharge.” The court responded to 90 requests from agencies seeking intelligence on specific juvenile probationers in 2023, according to the report.

O’Rourke said 2024 data on referrals were not available, and the court does not keep data on how often the requests for GPS information result in charges or convictions.

The court does not disclose to the teens — or their guardians — that their location data can be sent to law enforcement agencies for unrelated criminal investigations.

The Inquirer obtained a copy of the court’s GPS intake form, which includes rules for where the teen can and cannot go, how to request permission for “outside activities,” and instructions for how and how often to charge the monitor. But the form does not mention how the location data are collected and shared.

Dan Loeb, legal coordinator for the nonprofit YEAH Philly, said teens in Philadelphia are generally not apprised in court of the data-sharing practices.

“They certainly don’t agree to it and sign any kind of waiver or consent,” he said.

Officials with Philadelphia’s public defender’s office say they found out only in late 2023 that GPS data were being shared. The defenders filed a motion for contempt against a juvenile probation officer for what it considered an illegal disclosure of location data. Juvenile probation officials responded by disclosing, for the first time, the 2020 agreement with the attorney general.

In January 2024, El sent an email to probation officials citing rules of juvenile court procedure and asking for an end to the “unlawful” practice. She said she never received a response.

Amid a nationwide decline in juvenile crime, communities across the country have worked to empty out juvenile institutions over the last several decades, recognizing that locking up kids leads to worse outcomes across just about every measure.

Philadelphia has been part of that shift. The number of kids charged each year fell by more than half since 2009, juvenile court records show. That year, Philadelphia first adopted GPS-based electronic tracking of juveniles.

But compared with other big cities, Philly is an outlier, incarcerating kids and placing them on electronic monitoring at about triple the rates of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Phoenix.

Philadelphia now leases 400 monitors for use on teens awaiting trial or on probation, up from 155 in 2011. The city has nearly doubled its spending on GPS tracking in the last fiscal year, to $1.27 million.

“Every year, we request in our budget to add more GPS monitors,” deputy director of juvenile probation Amy Warner told Philadelphia City Council members in a January briefing, “because we know that it‘s better for children to stay in the community.”

Multiple youth advocates, however, said they were concerned by the perpetual expansion, which has continued even amid declines in crime. They have urged City Council to examine the impact of GPS monitors before green-lighting more funding. A resolution to do so passed last year, but the legislative body has yet to schedule a hearing.

The monitors are provided under a contract with the publicly traded company Track Group. The monitors track teens’ locations at five-minute intervals and are equipped with a 95-decibel siren and a speakerphone, enabling a probation officer to call at any moment with instructions. Philadelphia‘s contract with the company specifies that all calls be recorded but does not include provisions for how geolocation or audio data should be preserved or protected.

Track Group referred The Inquirer’s questions back to the court.

Philadelphia budget documents and child-welfare reports show that the number of Philly teens on monitors on any given day has increased by about 30% since 2019, while the incarcerated juvenile population fell only about 5%. The juvenile justice system had one monitor for every 12 teens on probation in 2019. Today, that ratio is about one to five.

The average duration Philly teens spent on monitoring has also increased.

In 2023, the court established a GPS Review Committee to expedite releases. Yet the average stint on GPS is now 68 days, about a week longer than it was three years ago.

O’Rourke, the court spokesperson, attributed that to more complex and serious cases that take longer to process, such as those involving DNA or ballistics analysis. Last year, about one-quarter of teens placed on GPS were charged with robbery or assault.

Court data show the majority of teens on monitoring were not accused of violent crimes. More than one-quarter were charged in stolen car cases.

El said she and the lawyers on her team often encounter young people on monitoring for charges that will ultimately be dismissed, based on hearsay that cannot be substantiated. Others are placed on monitoring even though they have been approved for court-based diversion programs.

Still others are on GPS even though judges have found they are not competent to stand trial, she said.

One of her clients, a girl with serious mental illness, was arrested for an assault at her school for children with mental health needs. A judge placed her on an ankle monitor, but the teen was “violating it constantly,” El said, “because she didn’t understand the rules of GPS.”

Because there were no available mental health services, the judge had nothing else to offer the teen. Ultimately, the judge decided to discharge the case.

In other cases, El said, clients end up in detention for GPS violations. About one in six kids admitted to Philadelphia’s juvenile detention center is placed there for a probation violation, city records show.

Judges can assign a condition called “first-violation hold,” meaning even one violation can result in a court date or placement in an institution.

One teen on probation, for a stolen car and a theft, was placed on GPS with such an order. Over the course of several days, he missed his curfew and visited a location that was not his home or school. At his next hearing, the court sentenced him to an institution for six to nine months, according to court records.

In early 2020, then-Attorney General Shapiro was looking to expand the reach of his Gun Violence Task Force, a collaboration that includes an array of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. Philadelphia’s juvenile probation department was already contacting the task force whenever one of its officers came across a gun. So they decided to forge a partnership, under which a probation officer would be detailed part time to the task force.

That was the origin of the memorandum of understanding that, according to O’Rourke, has enabled Philly’s juvenile probation officials to collaborate with agencies ranging from SEPTA police to the FBI.

Under Attorney General Dave Sunday, the task force has continued to benefit from that agreement, according to spokesperson Brett Hambright. He said neither a warrant nor probable cause is necessary for the task force to acquire data on juveniles, but added that the agency’s collaboration with juvenile probation is focused on “urgent and dangerous situations.”

For instance, Hambright highlighted the case of a teen on probation whose selfies on social media had featured an assault rifle. After a carjacking involving such a gun occurred nearby, juvenile probation officials used GPS data to show the teen was at the scene.

“Officers attempted to apprehend the juvenile, who fled,” Hambright said, adding that two guns were recovered.

He said the task force does not keep statistics on cases developed from that intelligence, or on whether the agreement has led to a reduction in gun violence.

Nonetheless, he described the arrangement as a useful investigative tool.

“Straw purchasing, gun trafficking, and illegal transfers are fueling a gun violence epidemic that constantly threatens our communities,” Hambright said. “It is particularly concerning when these firearms end up in the possession of juveniles on supervision.”

The same juvenile court procedure rules that restrict access to a minor’s probation file also require that any court order releasing information explicitly prohibits sharing it with any third party. The attorney general’s agreement contains no such prohibition.

Defense lawyers said they have seen GPS data used to identify defendants in cases ranging from robberies and shootings to federal carjacking prosecutions. But it is not always obvious when the location data were obtained or used to build a case. For example, an investigator may request data on all youth on GPS near a crime scene, but then scan those teens’ social media accounts for evidence that is ultimately introduced in court.

Michelle Mason, chief of the Philadelphia defender’s juvenile special defense unit, called it “hiding the baby” — meaning that prosecutors or police are not disclosing that their investigations started with the GPS-monitoring data. That makes it difficult to mount a legal challenge.

Mason said she worries the desire for heightened surveillance may be spurring probation “to keep kids on GPS for longer, for the purpose of law enforcement rather than for purposes of reform or correction.”

Five experts in juvenile justice and civil rights law who spoke with The Inquirer raised similar concerns.

Paul Hetznecker, a Philadelphia civil rights lawyer, called it a violation of the Fourth Amendment and the principles set out by the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States, where the court found that warrantless search of suspects’ cell phone data was unconstitutional.

The surveillance, he said, “moves dangerously into an area of predictive policing without the necessary guardrails to protect privacy.”

Little research has been done to understand how monitoring affects young people, or affects recidivism, mental health, or educational attainment, said Kate Weisburd, a professor at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, who has studied the rise of electronic monitoring.

“This extreme and quick growth of electronic monitoring is not supported by any data,” she said.

The available research is largely focused on recidivism. One study found no improvement in outcomes for teens on electronic monitoring, compared with those on house arrest without monitoring. Another analysis of teen girls placed on monitors linked the trackers to a significantly higher recidivism rate than girls released without monitors.

This extreme and quick growth of electronic monitoring is not supported by any data.

Overall, Philadelphia’s juvenile system has a six-year recidivism rate of 57%, a district attorney’s office analysis found — rising to 80% for those with at least two arrests.

District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office did not respond to requests for an interview about the increased use of GPS.

To understand more about the impact of ankle monitors, The Inquirer interviewed 15 teens who spent time on them. All of the teens had been on monitors for at least two months, and some as long as seven months.

A majority said being on the ankle monitors took a toll on their mental health, and they described falling into depression and feeling anxious, stressed, and hopeless.

One-third said they had been on and off the monitors multiple times with probation violations or new cases.

Almost half had switched to online schooling, citing fear of a monitoring violation or the stigma of wearing a monitor in class.

More than half said they had experienced at least one false alarm, with the GPS incorrectly indicating they were not at home or were outside school rather than in class.

One was Daelin, a 13-year-old Strawberry Mansion student who had been found delinquent on several misdemeanor charges, in what he said was his first-ever juvenile case. (The Inquirer is withholding his last name because he is a minor.)

He had spent more than three months on GPS and was allowed to leave home only to go to school. He said the device had incorrectly reported him as being outside the school, causing his probation officer to call him through the device. He had to shout back in the direction of his ankle to inform the officer that he was in class.

“Now they got the location dialed in,” he said in April.

Colleen Gibbons-Brown, who worked as a special-education teacher at Strawberry Mansion High School last school year, said similar false alarms had happened to students in her classes as well.

She typically had one or two kids on GPS monitoring in each class until they, almost invariably, suddenly stopped showing up, she said. She learned to check her roster to see if the student‘s enrollment had been transferred to the juvenile hall.

“I don’t think I had any student who had an ankle monitor who didn’t end up being arrested at some point,” she said.

El, the public defender, said that false alarms are a frequent point of contention in court, and that an analyst in her office is regularly called on to determine whether the GPS had pinged off a different cell tower.

I don’t think I had any student who had an ankle monitor who didn’t end up being arrested at some point.

O’Rourke, the court spokesperson, said false alarms were infrequent.

A half dozen parents or guardians, in interviews, generally said the monitor was reassuring: It let them know exactly where their kids were at all times.

Damalia Brown said her 15-year-old son was on supervision as a form of pretrial diversion for an alleged auto theft. He was arrested again for shoplifting from a Wawa.

“He keeps making the mistakes over and over,” she said with a sigh. “He needs help mentally.”

Some teens on monitors do have access to additional programs, such as the pretrial Evening Reporting Center, a court-ordered program run by Youth Advocate Programs, a national nonprofit. It offers tutoring, career coaching, life skills, a nightly family-style dinner, and occasional field trips. On a recent afternoon, the participants set up a basketball hoop in the parking lot for a scrimmage.

The program runs from 4 to 8 p.m. on weekdays, and teens stay for the 60 to 90 days it takes for their cases to move through the system. More than 90% complete the program successfully, meaning they are not arrested again before their cases are resolved, according to Renise Welbon, YAP’s regional director.

Welbon said she has watched young people embrace the opportunity for personal transformation. Other than keeping extra GPS chargers on hand, the fact that all participants are on the band rarely comes up. If anything, she said, “It makes them think about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It keeps them accountable.”

But many young people on monitors have complex needs that are not being served within the system, said Thaddeus Parker, who works for the McClain Foundation and facilitates an evening program for about 20 teens on GPS.

His goal, through the 12-week program, is to teach the teens coping skills and leave them with knowledge of how to access the resources they need on their own.

“These kids need clothes. They need food. They need beds — all types of stuff,” Parker said. ”And if they don’t trust you, they’re not even going to mention it. They’re not going to open up about it.”

This article was supported in part by funding from the Stoneleigh Foundation, a philanthropic organization seeking to improve the life outcomes of young people. Inquirer articles are created independently of donor support.