Is RePath an ankle monitor alternative?

RePath is a smartphone-based supervision platform. Agencies use it instead of ankle monitors for most pretrial, probation, parole, and treatment court caseloads, and alongside a monitor for the small number of cases where a court has ordered one. It provides location context plus check-ins, reminders, messaging, visit documentation, and impairment risk, which a monitor does not.

What does an ankle monitor cost compared to RePath?

Agencies and judges we work with put ankle monitoring at about $300 per participant per month, often charged to the participant, plus about $2,500 to replace a lost device. RePath runs at about 1/5th the cost of ankle monitoring and is priced per officer, not per participant, so the cost does not rise with the caseload and the participant pays nothing. Agency-specific pricing is available on request.

What if the participant leaves the phone at home or turns it off?

Officers see a missed check-in or a location gap immediately and treat it as a supervision event. In practice, officers report that people keep doing what they are not supposed to do with the phone on them. One youth who turned his location off was found through the location data of the person he was with.

RePath vs ankle monitors: cost, what you see, and where each fits

By the RePath team at eHawk, Inc. · Updated September 15, 2026

Ankle monitors have been the default for location-based supervision for decades. They do one job well: they tell you where a device is. Smartphone-based supervision does a different job. It tells you where a person is, whether they checked in, whether they showed up to court, what they said to their officer, and what happened at the last visit. The right question is not which one is better. It is which job your program needs done, and what each one costs to do it.

The short version

Cost. Agencies and judges we work with put ankle monitoring at about $300 per participant per month, usually charged to the participant, plus about $2,500 for every device that does not come back. RePath is priced per officer, so cost does not rise with the caseload and the participant pays nothing.
What you see. A monitor reports location. RePath reports location context, check-ins, reminders sent and delivered, two-way messages, visit notes, and impairment risk.
Who can be on it. A monitor goes on anyone the court orders. RePath goes on anyone with a phone, which in one rural Missouri circuit is 95% of the pretrial population; the other 5% are in residential treatment.
What the participant carries. A device that costs people jobs. Or the phone they already have.
Where a monitor still fits. The small number of cases where a court has ordered a worn device, or where the agency needs a tamper-evident instrument rather than a supervision record.

Side by side

	RePath (smartphone-based)	Ankle monitor
Location	✓ From the phone, with time-stamped location points, zones, and people-and-places context	✓ From the device
Check-ins and court-date reminders	✓ Scheduled check-ins, four reminders before a court date if the court wants them	—
Two-way communication	✓ Chat, video, and mass messages to a whole docket	—
Visit documentation	✓ Visit Assist records the visit and writes the note	—
Impairment risk	✓ Three in four high-risk flags that get tested come back positive	—
Supervision levels	✓ Three levels; a bump to high supervision is a same-day sanction with no hardware	Manual only
Cost to the participant	Nothing	Often $300 a month, charged to the person
Cost to the agency when it is lost	One rural county has lost one rental phone in the life of its program	About $2,500 per device, in one county's experience
Time to enroll	A courtroom line in about five minutes, in court, before release	Device fitting, vendor coordination, a funding step
Employment	Invisible at work	Some participants would be fired for wearing one; some wear boots it will not fit under
Tamper-evident worn device	—	✓

What the cost difference actually looks like

A rural Missouri pretrial administrator told us what the hardware budget problem looks like from a small county: "We do not have giant budgets for a bunch of ankle monitors like the big counties do." Her circuit built its whole pretrial program around RePath after bond reform and took a 55-bed jail from 64 people to 33. A Kansas drug court coordinator said the same thing from the other direction: "RePath finally let me figure out what's going on with this guy. We can't afford any more ankle monitors."

One Indiana county reports its supervision technology spend fell from about $100,000 a year to about $15,000 after moving to RePath. A Louisiana probation and parole district avoided about $20,000 in monitor spend on 200 supervision slots while getting about half an officer's time back.

When the monitor was wrong

A youth in Texas was on an ankle monitor and RePath at the same time. The monitor reported a violation. RePath showed it was wrong. The judge compared the two in open court and said, in effect, we are paying $300 a month for the monitor and this is working better. That department now puts RePath on everyone, bracelet or not, because it catches things the bracelet does not.

"Won't they just leave the phone at home?"

This is the first objection every director raises, and the officers who run these programs answer it the same way. A Kansas recovery court officer: "We have just been so shocked at how many people will still do things they are not supposed to do and keep their phone on them, which means we see it via RePath." A youth who turned his location off was found through the location data of the youth he was with. A Missouri prosecutor's version: they may not have a house, but they have a phone. People do not leave their phones. If they do, the program knows.

What a monitor gives you that a phone does not

A worn device is tamper-evident and the participant cannot set it down. For a case where the court has ordered one, or where the agency's policy requires a physical instrument, that is the tool. Agencies that run both put RePath on everyone and reserve the hardware for the few. What they stop doing is putting a $300-a-month device on a person who could not pay for it and would have sat in jail instead.

Where to go next

How pretrial programs use it: pretrial services. The two case studies most directors ask for: A large Missouri county and the a rural Missouri circuit. Location tools in detail: GPS and location services. And the plain facts about the company and product: facts about RePath.

RePath vs ankle monitors