All I wanted was to find a jewelry website with beautiful ankle bracelets for a gift for my friend. It seemed like an easy enough search as I typed ankle bracelet into the search engine. The internet was flooded with ankle bracelets, I wanted a quality piece of jewelry, but what I found was quite surprising. The house arrest, home monitoring ankle bracelet to keep track of felons!
The house arrest ankle bracelet is a monitor that allows the controller, (usually law enforcement) to observe via GPS tracking, offenders at their house to make sure they do not wander outside their given range.
It was humorous to see the list of women who at one time wore these ankle bracelets under protest like Martha Stewart and Paris Hilton. Their crimes were not as humorous as the way their crimes were handled. Because of their stature, their wealth and connections, these women were treated like royalty, too good for proper punishment. So they were given extra light sentences and ankle monitoring bracelets to keep track of them outside of prison bars.
Maybe, I thought, the next wave of fashion should be stylish ankle bracelets for offending celebrities. Paris Hilton could launch her own line of house arrest jewelry for the stylish offender. I could see the advertisement in my head; a beautiful tall blonde with long legs laying poolside with her sparkling house arrest ankle bracelet glimmering in the sun, the ultimate look of a good girl gone bad.
“A gold, silver or jeweled ankle bracelet with the smallest house arrest homing device will have you wearing your anklet long after the sentence is over. A house arrest ankle bracelet with a variety of sparkling gemstones to choose from that even the fashion police wouldn’t write a ticket for.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration favors the device on DUI offenders, reporting the cost efficiency compared to imprisonment and fewer repeated offenders.
The monitoring device has been around a long time. A psycholgist created the device in 1960, because he felt there were other ways to control convicts without sending more people to crowding jails. The monitoring device is a small black or gray square, the size of a pack of gum connected by a plastic black strap that goes around the ankle. There are huge consequences if its removed.
Obviously, I thought to myself, I needed to be more specific with my search. I was wasting time. Again, each time I entered anything with the words “ankle bracelet” in the title, some convict would come up. Lindsay Lohan was recently spotted at Pure night club in Las Vegas partying with her ankle bracelet- the one she’s suppose to wear to detect alcohol in her system!
It got me thinking, maybe I should create an ankle bracelet inspired by the infamous Hollywood bad girls. They would be thick on one end, like the real ones are, but instead of having the actual device on them, they would have a pocket to hold your MP3 player or just big enough to hold your ID and your cash for going out on the town! The other part of the ankle bracelet would come in different colors and fabrics even real gold or silver or maybe I could bring Velcro back into style.
I decided that if someone were to give me one of these fake ankle monitoring bracelets as a gift, would I wear it? Would my friend appreciate the fact I was making her look like a convicted felon? I decided I would buy a lovely silver ankle bracelet with a matching silver link bracelet that I found online.
When they arrived in the mail, I knew they were just what she was looking for. I knew her face would light up when she opened them. I giggled while I placed them in a lovely wrapped box inside fluffy tissue, inside the pocket of the homemade, pink leopard skin, fake ankle monitoring device.