House arrest
House arrest (also called home confinement, or electronic monitoring) is a legal measure where a person is required to remain at their residence under supervision, typically as an alternative to imprisonment.
[1] Around this time, newly designed electronic monitoring devices made it more affordable and easier for corrections authorities to manage.
Home detention is an alternative to imprisonment; its goals are both to reduce recidivism and to decrease the number of prisoners, thereby saving money for states and other jurisdictions.
The terms of house arrest can differ, but most programs allow employed offenders to continue to work, and confine them to their residence only during non-working hours.
[5][6] Many programs also allow the convict to leave their residence during regular, pre-approved times in order to carry out general household errands, such as food shopping and laundry.
[4] In some exceptional cases, it is possible for a person to be placed under house arrest without trial or legal representation, and subject to restrictions on their associates.
Another method of ensuring house arrest compliance is achieved through the use of automated calling services that require no human contact to check on the offender.
"Goffman uses the term ‘‘total institutions’’ as a sensitizing concept to refer to organizations that separate certain types of people from the rest of society".
Although house arrest allows individuals to stay at home, it uses similar restrictions that jails and prisons have through the electronic monitoring.
Yet, while a sentence to electronic monitoring means that clients still spend time with their family and domestic partners, the disciplinary regime of house arrest significantly shapes those relationships".
[13] "House arrest officers also meet with ‘‘collateral contacts’’ and make unannounced on-site visits to places of employment and residences.
"[13] Residence checks by law enforcement in house arrest programs can be seen as invasive and cause privacy issues for people serving time.
[15] In Italy, house arrest (in Italian arresti domiciliari) is a common practice of detaining suspects, as an alternative to detention in a correctional facility, and is also commonly practiced on those felons who are close to the end of their prison terms, or for those whose health condition does not allow residence in a correctional facility, except some particular cases of extremely dangerous persons.
The prosecuting authorities and law enforcement can check at any moment whether the subject, who is de facto considered in state of detention, is complying with the order; violation of house arrest terms is immediately followed by transfer to a correctional facility.
Electronic monitoring equipment is extensively used by the New Zealand Department of Corrections to ensure that convicted offenders subject to home detention remain within approved areas.
This takes the form of a Global Positioning System tracker fitted to the offender's ankle and monitoring units located at their residence and place of employment.
