Electronic Monitoring: A Review of The Empirical Literature

Abstract

In the past few years, a number of books and articles have been published on electronic monitoring. Most of these works have dealt primarily with theoretical, legal, or economic issues. There has been no published account of a field experiment specifically designed or conducted to measure effectiveness in empirical terms. The studies which have provided quantitative data tend to suggest that electronically monitored offenders have generally fared neither better nor worse than similar offenders sentenced to more restrictive sanctions. This conclusion is tentative at best because the studies which have been conducted to date have all suffered, to a greater or lesser extent, from methodological inadequacies. The following work reviews these studies, summarizes their findings, and critiques their methods.