Recently, the National Association of Counties met for their annual gathering in Pittsburgh. There, the NACo Justice and Public Safety Steering Committee approved a “Resolution in Support of Continuous Alcohol Monitoring for Pre-Trial Populations.” We’ve seen the benefits continuous alcohol monitoring, or CAM, can bring to counties, so it’s encouraging to see a well-respected organization such as NACo make its official support known.

As has been well documented in recent years, jails and prisons are at or above capacity in many jurisdictions. The most recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicated there were 2.3 million inmates in local jails or in custody of state or federal prisons, a jump of 700 percent from 1973 to 2009.