Hennepin DOCCR selects SCRAMx alcohol testing system for county's Home Monitoring program

The Hennepin County Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation (DOCCR) has selected the SCRAMx alcohol monitoring system for the county's Electronic Home Monitoring program. The new contract, approved by the county's Public Safety Judiciary Committee February 1st, includes selection of an array of electronic monitoring systems to manage the county's adult and juvenile offenders, both pre- and post-adjudication. The program will be managed by Fairmont-based Midwest Monitoring & Surveillance.

SCRAMx (which stands for Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor) is an alcohol testing system that includes an anklet, worn 24/7, that samples an offender's perspiration every 30 minutes to ensure compliance with court- or agency-ordered sobriety. Known as Continuous Alcohol Monitoring (or CAM), SCRAMx has been used to monitor drunk drivers and other alcohol-involved offenders in Hennepin and surrounding counties since 2005. The new DOCCR contract, which will add 250 to 350 SCRAMx bracelets by the end of the month, makes Hennepin the largest county-level CAM program in the country.

While the bid process focused on the lowest priced responsive bidder that could provide the full array of electronic monitoring services for the county, officials took the additional step of conducting a one-week demo of the SCRAMx System. According to John Hennessey, vice president of Strategic Accounts for Denver-based Alcohol Monitoring Systems (AMS), which manufactures and markets SCRAMx throughout North America, the bid process involved an extensive demo as well as an evaluation of the technology's ability to meet the evidentiary standards required by the courts. "The combination of a strong, full service EM provider and the history and reputation of our system all helped solidify the county's decision to utilize SCRAMx and MMS," says Hennessey. SCRAMx has been used extensively in pretrial programs in Hennepin and surrounding counties since 2005, monitoring over 2,300 offenders to-date.

SCRAM first launched to the corrections market in April of 2003. In 2010 AMS introduced the newest version of the system, called SCRAMx, which incorporates optional home detention monitoring into the same bracelet. To-date SCRAMx has monitored 165,000 offenders in 48 states. More than 12,100 offenders are monitored daily nationwide.