BELOIT — At first, Naja Yarbrough wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of being tracked by an electronic device.

“To be honest, at the beginning, I hated it,” said the 25-year-old Beloit woman, who was convicted of hit and run causing injury and wore a Global Positioning System monitoring bracelet for about three months.

Ultimately, Yarbrough realized wearing the bracelet is better than the alternative.

“I have five kids, and I’d rather be at home with them,” she said. “It’s better than being locked up behind bars.”

Currently, county inmates eligible for work-release programs have a voice in the decision whether to wear an electronic tether. State law requires a judge, sheriff, the state Department of Corrections and the inmate to agree on program participation.

Rock County Sheriff Bob Spoden believes that law should be updated — both to save the county money and jail space, as well as to help deputies better monitor Huber work-release inmates.

“The way the (current) law reads is that if you as an inmate don’t want to go, then I as sheriff have no recourse,” Spoden said. “The fact is we have a lot of guys who don’t want to go (on the bracelet).”

Spoden contacted state Rep. Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville, and state Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, about changing the law. Sheridan, who drafted Assembly Bill 773 to eliminate the inmate and the DOC from the equation, agrees with Spoden’s assessment.

“It was frustrating for the sheriff, and (for) that part of the system,” he said.

State Rep. Chuck Benedict, D-Beloit, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said legislators must respect the balance between saving money and protecting the public.

“We’re seeing a lot of overcrowding, and it’s very expensive to incarcerate people,” he said. “But we also need to protect our citizens, particularly from people who’ve been convicted of violent crimes.”

While the bill did not pass out of committee for a floor vote before the Legislature adjourned March 13, the issue isn’t likely to die.

“If we don’t get it done this time, we’ll definitely be bringing it back early in the next session,” Sheridan said.

While University of Wisconsin-Whitewater sociology professor Richard Salem believes changing the law would help alleviate jail overcrowding, he sees adverse effects to forcing inmates into an electronic-monitoring program.

“Some people don’t want to go on monitoring because they know they’re going to mess up,” he said, which would land those people back in crowded jails.

County officials have found that tracking the whereabouts of tethered inmates is easier than tracking those who spend the night in jail and are released for up to 12 hours each day to go to work.

“If we have somebody who’s on the bracelet with an alcohol-monitoring capability, if they have anything to drink, we can detect that and it’s a violation,” sheriff’s Lt. Russ Steeber said. “(With Huber), they could sit and chug a beer or two before they get to work, and we’d never know about it … By the time they get back here, they’re sober.”

About 70 inmates currently are participating in the electronic-monitoring program. They pay for the equipment — $16.88 per day to be on the bracelet, compared to $17.15 to stay in the Huber dorm. But electronic-monitoring saves the county $60 per day per prisoner because that person does not have to be housed and fed each night.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Brent DeRemer, who oversees the program, said the program saved the county roughly $88,000 per month in 2007. Last month, electronic monitoring saved the county more than $102,000.

Those who oppose expanding the electronic-monitoring program fear that an inmate will commit a serious or violent crime while wearing the bracelet instead of sitting in jail. While law-enforcement officials concede there is a chance that could happen, they also say they only offer electronic monitoring to those who meet select criteria.

Inmates with criminal histories that include sex-related felonies, felony drug charges, sexual assault of children or those with five or more drunk-driving offenses do not qualify. Among other qualifications, current charges must not include child abuse or domestic abuse in which the victim would live at the same address as the inmate, unless an adult victim has given his or her approval.

Inmates also must be classified as low- or medium-level offenders, a status that would apply if they were housed in the jail. Those who aren’t can spend the first 30 days of their sentence behind bars, and reapply for the program if they meet other criteria.

“If you behave, you can be moved out to a situation that allows you a little more freedom,” DeRemer explained.

Bill Grosshans, assistant administrator for the DOC’s Division of Community Corrections, said his department hasn’t had time to study proposed changes in the law.

“If it comes back up later,” he said, “we’ll take a good look at it then.”

Even if the bill isn’t resurrected, UW-Whitewater’s Salem believes electronic-monitoring programs will continue to grow.

“It’s my perception that electronic monitoring is being used more and more,” he said. “It’s a more humane thing than keeping people in jail because it allows them to live their lives.”

Yarbrough agrees.

“It’s better than being in jail,” she said.