Electronic Home Monitoring

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Home confinement or house arrest is an intermediate community corrections program designed to restrict the activities of offenders in the community. This sanction allows offenders to remain in their homes, go to work, run errands, attend school, and maintain other responsibilities, as long as the courts approve. These conditions set by the court are kept enforced electronically and by frequent staff visits. Offenders placed under home confinement are restricted to their residence for varying lengths of time and are required to maintain a strict schedule of daily activities. The technologies of electronic monitoring started with the work of Dr Ralph Schwitzgebel of the Science Committee on Psychological Experimentation at Harvard University 1968. In 1964, he developed a one-kilogram Radio Telemetry Device that could be worn by a person. The device transmitted signals to a modified missile-tracking unit up to 400 meters away, which determined the wearer’s location on a screen. In the early 1980s an American judge persuaded a company to develop a monitoring bracelet suitable for offenders to wear (Rondinelli 1998). In 1983, the first order was made requiring an offender who had breached parole to wear an anklet to monitor his future behavior (Liverani1998). This use of electronic monitoring devices became commonly known as “tagging”. These developments took place at a time when community-based sanctions were becoming more prevalent and of greater significance in reducing prison populations (Richardson 1999). Against a background of stubbornly high prison populations and rapidly developing technology, governments are now reaching a critical point in the use of electronic monitoring as a means of reducing costs and improving the effectiveness of corrections. The aggressive marketing of private companies has been instrumental in the growth of electronic monitoring
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