Trade Your Prison Sentence for a Smartwatch?

Last summer, Delores Wallace’s sister, who was serving a 3 ½-year sentence in federal prison, asked her to look into a company that was all the buzz on her cell block. The company, called Oaks of Justice, claimed it could help people get out of federal prison early and serve out their sentences at home while being monitored by a state-of-the-art surveillance system.

Wallace was skeptical. Her sister had just spent over $6,000 on another early release promise that went nowhere—one that claimed she could shave time off her sentence by enrolling in rehab. “At this point, I’m nobody’s fool,” Wallace said. But her sister was hopeful, so Wallace agreed to contact the founder of Oaks of Justice, a woman named Jo Morgan.

In emails to Wallace, some of which were shared with The Marshall Project, Morgan explained that her program allowed people convicted of nonviolent offenses to go home if