JEROME - Raymundo Pena is trotting around Boise rather than sitting in jail.

But he is paying big brother to watch him.

At any given time of day or night, big brother could be Jack Green, his wife or daughter, who have recently begun contracting with the Jerome County court system to shackle defendants and offenders' ankles to a global positioning system. Then they monitor Pena as he moves about Boise, the city that a judge ordered him not to leave.

Even at Green's price of $20 a day, the county saves $10 per day for each inmate it pulls from the Jerome County jail and $25 for each overflow inmate it pulls from other county jails.

"If you were to, say, take all the overflow low-risk misdemeanors in Twin Falls and in this area (Jerome County) it would save them about half (the price) on their low-risk misdemeanors," Green said. "They could use the beds for their felony inmates."

Pena is paying the cost of the GPS device directly to Fast Bail Bond Inc., as ordered by the judge.

Pena appears as a red flag on a computer monitor in Green's home. Every five minutes, that flag's location is updated by a satellite. If Pena flees, the ankle device vibrates and can trigger a 95-decibel alarm - as loud as a police siren. Green can immediately eavesdrop and speak to the fugitive.

If Pena tries to cut the three bands of steel wrapped around his ankle, it triggers the alarm. If he removes the batteries, the device continues functioning for a few hours.

"I am their supervisor, in effect," said Green. "I can see them move on a real-time basis on the computer. So we know exactly where they are all the time."

Green can talk to the subjects to warn them not to venture too far. But Green can only listen in when they try to cross their court-ordered boundaries.

A Utah-based company leases TrackerPAL, the ankle monitoring device, to Green. The value of each device is $1,500, Green said. He declined to say how much they cost his company, Fast Bail Bonds Inc., to lease.

Green said, however, that if Jerome County assumed the lease directly from the distributor and had its own staff monitor TrackerPAL, it may cost the county less money.

Jerome County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Seib has not seen costs of jailing inmates compared with the cost of shackling them.

He would like to see a cost-benefit analysis before he decides if it's worth it.

"You do have to do a case-by-case analysis," Seib said. "If it was cheaper and it did alleviate the various concerns that you have, then it might be something to look at."

Times-News writer Cassidy Friedman can be reached at (208)735-3241 or by e-mail at cfriedman@magicvalley.com.