Reply #4: well, we could turn it into a fight about something ;) [View All]

[iverglas]

I PMed luna with an interesting paper I found on the net:

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~pnijjar/cs692/emonitoring.html
"Towards Acceptable Electric Monitoring Policies for Offenders"
(apparently there was a glitch in the assigned topic, which should have been "electronic monitoring"; otherwise, visions of electrified fences and collars come to mind ...)

-- just a short grad student paper from a university in Ontario, but it raises some issues:

At first glance, using electronic monitoring (EM) to keep track of people convicted of crimes seems attractive. The reasons proponents offer for EM often centre around cost. The reasoning goes that keeping offenders under house arrest through the use of check-ins and electronic tracking is cheaper than putting them in prison. Social benefits cited by proponents are that electronically monitored offenders have the opportunity to work and support their families, while reducing their exposure to a brutal prison culture that could further harden them. Given that rates of incarceration are going up -- the federal rate of incarceration grew 22% between 1989-1990 and 1994-1995 -- and that incarceration does not seem to improve recidivism rates compared to parole, Canada's justice system is under pressure to find less costly alternatives to imprisoning those convicted of crimes. Electronic monitoring may be a reasonable alternative, but it comes with costs and benefits that may not be immediately apparent.

... The first phenomenon is knowns as "widening the net." It refers to convicted offenders being sentenced to EM when they wouldn't have been sentenced to prison in the first place. Some evidence that the net is being widened exists: Reports published by the Criminal Lawyers Association and the Solicitor General of Canada suggest that low-risk offenders who pose little harm to the community -- and thus may have been less likely to be incarcerated -- are the most frequent targets for EM. For most offenders, EM is probably preferable to serving jail sentences, but less preferable than traditional parole and much less preferable than performing community service or paying a fine.

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