A Rhode Island-based company has developed a GPS tracking system that could revolutionize the way law enforcement agencies track criminals across the state. And, in the end, the system could serve as an alternative to housing hundreds of convicted criminals and save the state millions of dollars.

“I’m pretty excited about it, in all honesty,” said Jon Houston, executive director of Justice Assistance, a nonprofit agency whose mission is to stimulate excellence in the administration of justice in Rhode Island. “I believe that this could be an absolute game saver.”

Last February, Justice Assistance and Lighthouse Computer Services Inc. of Lincoln, received a $200,000 grant through the office of Rep. Patrick Kennedy to finance the tracking program. They are now waiting for approval of another $600,000 in grants to finance the project. In return, Lighthouse Computer and Justice Assistance will pony up about 40 percent of the startup costs that are expected to top $1 million. Lighthouse Computer is working with OmniLink of Georgia, a leading innovator of one-piece GPS unit design, which has provided tracking systems for 4,500 federal and state criminal offenders nationwide.

Officials at Lighthouse Computer said that their tracking system includes an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor the activity of criminals, but it’s very different from what is currently being used in Rhode Island. For more than 15 years, the Department of Corrections has tracked criminals who are completing sentences on home confinement.

In recent months, criminals such as Frank “Bobo” Marrapese Jr., a mobster and convicted killer, have been released from the Adult Correctional Institutions with electronic anklets.. The device allows prison officials to check to see whether former inmates such as Marrapese are home, or within a certain radius of their homes, at designated times.

The system works through a telephone land line.

But, officials say, the system is based largely on trust. The former inmates are allowed to work, attend church services, visit doctors or meet with their lawyers. Once they leave their homes, with permission, corrections officials can only assume they have gone where they are expected to go.

For the most part, the system has worked, but it does have its flaws.

In 1994, David W. Vial, of North Providence, was serving a six-month sentence on home confinement when he participated in an armed robbery of the Dexter Credit Union in Central Falls. On the day of the holdup, Vial was scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial conference on a drug charge. He called the corrections department and asked for permission to go to the courthouse from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. They told him he could stay until 1:30 p.m.

Vial wrapped up his court business at 10:30 a.m. With three hours to spare, he hooked up with three other men and held up the credit union. The day ended with a shootout between the police and credit union robbers outside an apartment complex in North Providence.

The Lighthouse Computer program promises to plug those holes. Officials at the firm also would like to see the state and all local law enforcement agencies tapped into the system.

Jim Berard, the firm’s criminal justice systems integration specialist, said the new GPS tracking system would work like this: Any corrections department employee or law enforcement officer, could log into the system through a laptop computer. Within 30 seconds, access would be available to all of the state’s inmates wearing electronic anklets. From there, the official could click on the name of an inmate and find out exactly where he or she is at that moment. The program also would allow the authorized user to find out where the inmate had been earlier in the day or the previous week.

Berard said the system has the capacity to track an inmate’s movements back as far as 30 days. He said the police could use the system, for example, to find an abducted child. He said users could click on the names of any suspected child molesters and review where they were at the time of the abduction, or whether they had been in the neighborhood in the days or weeks prior to the abduction.

According to the Department of Corrections’ Web site, there are about 200 Level 2 and 3 sexual offenders — the most serious classifications — living in the state. None of them are currently wearing tracking devices, but Tracey Poole, ACI spokeswoman, said that state legislation passed in January 2007 requires all inmates convicted of first-degree sexual abuse to wear the anklets when they are released from prison.

Poole said that there are currently 12 inmates serving sentences for the crime — only those convicted after the legislation was passed are affected — and the first felon is not scheduled for release until July 2010.

Since 1989, the ACI has had about 10,000 inmates released with electronic anklets. Poole said that the corrections department’s five-year contract with the provider of the anklets, BI Incorporated, of Boulder, Colo., expired last week.

Another possible use is for those arrested on domestic-violence charges. In most cases, judges issue restraining orders that prohibit abusers from having contact with their victims. With the GPS tracking device, the authorities could learn whether the abuser had been anywhere near the victim’s residence.

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch said that he has visited Lighthouse Computers twice and has left impressed. “This is a technology that is going to be more and more needed,” he said. “It’s taking new technology and making it better.”

Lynch and Houston, of Justice Assistance, said the GPS tracking system could offset the escalating costs of housing inmates — $108 per day — in the ACI complex. In recent years, the state prisons have experienced a significant boom in population and they have had trouble finding space to jail them.

Lynch said the new system could help alleviate those problems.

“It’s an important cog,” he said. “We recognize more than anybody the burden placed on the prison system.”

David Sylvestre, spokesman for Lighthouse Computer, said that the company is waiting for the state to issue a request for proposals so they can bid on the project. He said that the cost will be based on how many agencies choose to participate.

bmalinow@projo.com