Carbon County officials are looking at ways to increase the use of its Restrictive Intermediate Punishment program.

On Thursday, the commissioners approved a letter of award from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency for the county’s 2016-2017 electronic monitoring program. The match-free state grant totals $12,953.Rick Parsons, county chief adult probation officer, said that the department currently has 15 electronic monitoring units available and three in use at this time.He said that the grant will be used to purchase two additional units, as well as pay the vendor fees for the monitoring of offenders.The program allows the courts to sentence offenders with minimal crimes, such as second and third DUI offenses, to the home electronic monitoring program instead of prison.Parsons said moving forward that he plans to reconvene a committee that has overseen the program in the coming months to look at how the program is working, how the county is using it, evaluate the current needs of the county and develop future goals for the program.“My intent is to see where we are and where we want to go and modify from there,” he said.The Restrictive Intermediate Punishment program has been in Carbon County since the late 1990s when the county was one of only 13 counties in the state awarded a grant to begin the program.