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Electronic Monitoring and House Arrest

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Introduction to Criminal Justice
Electronic Monitoring and House Arrest
Katelyn Fritz
November 24, 2013

Introduction
Electronic Monitoring (EM) and house arrest (HA) is a system that has been met with both trepidation and acceptance since its integration in the 1980’s. Though it goes by many names, including Community Sentencing and Intermediate sanctions, it still maintains a single identity. It is a form of punishment for offenders as an alternative to incarceration. This program applies to offenders chosen at the judge’s discretion and is based upon the offenders compliance, the nature of the infraction, and the burden on the system. Involved is a period of time where the offender is confined to his home under the supervision of a probation officer and some form of electronic monitoring. These monitoring options include the random call method (RC), an ankle monitor using radio frequency (RF) or GPS technology, or a combination thereof (Burell & Gable, 2008).
Electronic monitoring is touted as an ideal means of reducing overcrowding in jails and prisons, but how effect is electronic monitoring and house arrest really? More than 30 years after its integration, there are several issues that have developed, or that have yet to be resolved.
To demonstrate this lets us look at one example that occurred in the year 2000. Gerald A. Jones, a young, 18 year old man, was convicted of a robbery after sticking a gun into a woman’s face and stealing her watch. As a result, he was placed under house arrest with an electronic monitoring device. Yet, unbeknown to his probation officer, the equipment failed within days of the beginning of his sentence. As the sentence carried on, the failure continued to go unnoticed until one night when Mr. Jones left his house to attend a party to mourn the loss of one of the local gang members. Towards the end of the

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