STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This is a mind-blowing statistic. A quarter of a million people in the United States - 250,000 people in the United States - wear electronic ankle monitors in lieu of serving prison time. Such a big number, it makes me want to just look down on my own ankles just to check. I think I'm OK. One of those 250,000 people will be a contestant later this month on the ABC reality show "Dancing With The Stars." NPR's Neda Ulaby reports.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Anna Delvey is not a star. She is a celebrity con artist. Her story was dramatized two years ago in a Netflix series called "Inventing Anna."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INVENTING ANNA")
JULIA GARNER: (As Anna Delvey) So the Anna Delvey Foundation is a private club, but...
ULABY: Delvey was born Anna Sorokin in the former Soviet Union. She was only in her 20s when she posed as a wealthy German heiress and tricked New York investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INVENTING ANNA")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Miss Sorokin is charged in a New York state Supreme Court indictment.
ULABY: Delvey served two years in prison. Since her release in 2022, she's worn an ankle monitor while fighting deportation. She wore one with a glittery dress during the "Dancing With The Stars" announcement.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED INTERVIEWER: Do you think that that will affect your performance at all this season?
ULABY: That's from an online interview this week with The Hollywood Reporter.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ANNA DELVEY: No, it's actually pretty light.
ULABY: It's pretty light came as a surprise for law professor Kate Weisburd.
KATE WEISBURD: I mean, I've represented so many people who were ordered to wear ankle monitors. I have never heard anyone refer to it as light.
ULABY: Weisburd did not represent the kind of people invited to compete on dance shows. She's never heard of anyone with an ankle monitor being allowed to perform on television. The monitors are extremely restrictive. They're about the size of a cigarette pack.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DELVEY: Do you want to try it?
EZRA SOSA: Do you want to touch it? You can touch it.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERVIEWER: Yeah. We're going to touch the ankle monitor right now.
ULABY: They are like fetish objects on celebrities. People with ankle monitors have to pay for them. They often cost hundreds of dollars a month. If you cannot pay, you go back to prison, Weisburd says. And although they are small, it's hard for many people to work in them.
WEISBURD: Like, if someone works at a factory and has to wear boots, they can't wear boots because the ankle monitor gets in the way.
ULABY: They can get stuck, go off unexpectedly, they blink.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SOSA: I didn't know it blinks.
ULABY: And sometimes they report wrong information. Anna Delvey's spokesperson did not respond to NPR's request for comment. Kate Weisburd says this show might minimize the issues with ankle monitors rather than helping to destigmatize them. She will be rooting for another contestant, she says, the female Olympic rugby player who just showed up on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
