Essay on Electronic Monitoring

Electronic monitoring is the newest community sentence and might be given a statutory basis in the future. Electronic monitoring is a viable substitute for imprisonment or any other form of deprivation of liberty. This is the conclusion of an assessment of recent experiments with electronic monitoring in four jurisdictions (Spaans and Verwers 1997).

Because, as the Green Paper points out, supervision in the community is more conducive to the goals of reparation and reconciliation than is incarceration, gradual release back into the community, probation, and parole have a clear place in sentencing practices built around conflict resolution. Can the same be said for electronic monitoring? Electronic monitoring is based on technology developed in the United States in the last decade. It was introduced ostensibly to provide a less expensive alternative to incarceration.

Current technology uses a bracelet attached to an arm or ankle that emits a signal that is monitored by a telephone receiver, and thus allows the authorities to impose house arrest on an offender without the need for direct supervision. The technology is attractive because it allows for more or less intensive or constant but relatively inexpensive supervision.

Electronic monitoring has been welcomed by correctional authorities in North America, confronted by prison overcrowding and the expense of building new prisons. It has been roundly condemned, on the other hand, by a variety of advocacy groups for a variety of reasons. Electronic monitoring has the effect, some have argued, of turning an offender’s home into a prison. It impacts directly on those with whom an offender lives and constitutes an invasion of privacy. Most important, however, is its ‘net widening’ potential. Critics have argued that the introduction of electronic monitoring will not result in reduced prison population. Rather, it will be applied to offenders who might otherwise have received a suspended sentence, or a community service order, or probation, and so on..................

ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGY