Reno firm sees growth in alcohol-detection bracelets

Mike Straw positions his Intercept LLC as a one-stop shop for house-arrest products.

It's a weird little niche, but Straw expects to see substantial growth for the Reno company as judges and attorneys increasingly turn to high-tech ankle bracelets to monitor alcohol use by criminal offenders.

Intercept LLC is breaking even these days as nine offenders wear the bracelets marketed by the firm that use a technology called "Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor" to detect alcohol use.

But Straw has 45 units ready to go, and he's knocking on the doors of 30 attorneys a week to get them interested.

"It's a lot of calls and a lot of waiting," says Straw, who continues to operate his mainstay business, Northern Nevada Investigations, as he builds the new firm.

His pitch to lawyers: The bracelets developed by Denver's Alcohol Monitoring Systems allow offenders to continue working while ensuring that authorities know if they drink.

Offenders have been ordered to use the technology by Sparks Justice Court, Reno Municipal Court, the Department of Alternative Sentencing and Family Court.

In a couple of Reno-area cases, Straw says, persons involved in nasty divorce actions have voluntarily worn the monitoring bracelets for 90 days to show that an ex-spouse has made false claims of alcohol abuse.

The ankle bracelet automatically analyzes secretions of the wearer's sweat glands for alcohol use 24 times a day. Results are downloaded into a modem and collected by a monitoring center that alerts Intercept LLC of violations.

The company also is alerted about attempts to tamper with the detector.

Cost of the system, which courts usually require offenders to pay, runs $10 a day plus a $35 intake fee. That's a bargain, Straw says, compared with the $17 a day that the average alcoholic spends on liquor every day not to mention the cost of a lost job.

Intercept LLC, which employs three, also markets traditional house-arrest monitoring systems that keep track of offenders.