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Abstract: 

The purpose of this article is to provide an up-to-date overview of “continuous alcohol monitoring,” with a focus on the SCRAM Continuous Alcohol Monitoring (CAM) bracelet and technology, including the science, research, and testing. The SCRAM CAM is an ankle-worn bracelet that automatically measures and reports on the presence of transdermal alcohol concentration (TAC) to detect the ingestion of alcohol by individuals sanctioned under court order. Since its introduction in 2003, the SCRAM CAM bracelet has become one of the most widely used tools for alcohol monitoring in corrections. It is currently used in seven countries, all fifty US states, and over 4,800 US courts and agencies. As of this writing SCRAM CAM has been used to monitor over 780,000 unique individuals for a total of over 82,000,000 monitored days, and is being used to monitor over 23,000 unique individuals per day. The author, a member of the SCRAM product development and testing team, outlines the basic science underlying TAC monitoring, describes the ways in which the equipment is designed, built, and calibrated for field use, and analyzes how the data generated by SCRAM is interpreted and applied. This article was published in December 2020, is Copyrighted © 2020, and contains material that was current in 2020.

Keywords: Transdermal Alcohol Science; The SCRAM CAM Bracelet; TAC Curve; Calibration and Data Interpretation; Sources of Error and Safeguards

Affiliations:  1: Caliper.