Electronic Monitoring of Domestic Violence Cases—A Study of Two Bilateral Programs
The Imposition of Economic Sanctions in Philadelphia: Costs, Fines, and Restitution
Electronic Monitoring of Domestic Violence Cases—A Study of Two Bilateral Programs
1 Where research has been done on the use of EM in DV cases (e.g., a Michigan study), such work has been largely conducted by the agencies themselves, and has not been made easily available to other practitioners or the scholarly community.
2 The vast majority (90 percent) of persons who were under liberty restrictions in the programs studied were not convicted of domestic violence at the time of their enrollment; therefore we will refer to them throughout as "defendants."
3 The victim is enrolled into a program of electronic surveillance in at least one sense, and possibly two senses: First, because she is kept abreast of the approach of another party to her home perimeter by electronic means; second, because the victim's own movements in and out of her home are monitored if her duress pendant is a transmitter that sends signals to a base receiver in communication with a monitoring center, as is the case in one of the two study sites.
4 Although we use the term "victim" throughout this paper, in most cases the victims are "alleged," since the bulk of the cases monitored by these programs await adjudication. Because most domestic violence victims who come to official attention are women, we refer to the victims in the female form. Furthermore, female victims are far likelier to request, or be provided with, BEM.
5 The two departments had varying degrees of records to consult; in River County the data were quite extensive, while Lakefront's data were sparse.
6 Lakefront and River County are pseudonyms.
7 Lakefront equips victims with a field monitoring device, but River County does not; River County's equipment can detect the victim's entrance and exit from home (assuming she carries her duress pendant), but Lakefront's equipment cannot; and River County's equipment transmits whatever sounds occur at the victim's home when the base unit has been activated.
8 During our research, a proxy of a participating defendant murdered a River County victim protected by BEM. The proxy murdered her the night before she was to testify against her ex-partner. He claimed he was acting as a "Good Samaritan," trying to save the children of the couple, out of fear that the victim's ex-partner would kill both the woman and her children. In this case, EM logs provided evidence that it was not the defendant on BEM who committed the murder, since records showed he never left his home on the night of the slaying.
9 Caseload size varied considerably between the two programs. The number of enrolled defendants at any point ranged from 12 to 43 in River County and averaged 25 during the study period. The range at Lakefront was approximately 0 to 2, with an average of 0 or 1.
10 Our research (Erez, Ibarra, and Lurie, forthcoming) has found that victims or defendants referred to a BEM program may not participate for reasons such as limited economic means, inability to secure a separate residence or installation of a land-based telephone line, unwillingness to disable certain telephone features (e.g., call waiting, internet access), and limited or blocked radio frequency transmission/ reception in area of residence.
11 The programs had different levels of victim support services. River County assigned a special officer to deal with victims' issues, 24/7. This officer handled all concerns related to victim participation in the program, including the installation of the equipment, notification of court appointments, explanation of court proceedings, and provision of various forms of trouble-shooting. This officer also offered counseling and court escort as needed. At Lakefront, the same officer handled both offender and victim issues, and had little contact with victims by comparison.
12 Elsewhere (Erez, Ibarra, and Lurie, forthcoming) we discuss how defendants perceive the punitive dimension of their respective program. River County defendants were especially concerned about the liberty restrictions and heightened level of supervision; Lakefront defendants were more concerned about the costs involved in participating in the program.
13 The data provided by Lakefront were incomplete in this respect, so the average is a rough estimate.
The Imposition of Economic Sanctions in Philadelphia: Costs, Fines, and Restitution
1 These crimes were robbery (14,494), aggravated assault (13,718), theft by unlawful taking (9,610), retail theft (7,616), burglary (7,384), receiving stolen property (6,491), simple assault (5,895), public assistance act violations (5,294), forgery (2,643), murder (1,733), unauthorized use of an automobile (1,307), attempted theft by unlawful taking (1189), recklessly endangering another person (1,149), criminal trespass (956), harassment (801), terroristic threats (784), first degree murder (624), attempted burglary (381), theft by deception (365), arson (351), intimidation of witness or victim (327), stalking (228), causing or risking catastrophe (110), homicide by vehicle while DUI (71), involuntary manslaughter (105), attempted theft by deception (105), robbery of motor vehicle (77), copying through recording devices (76), aggravated assault by vehicle while DUI (67), voluntary manslaughter (66), insurance fraud (61), ethnic intimidation (57), and buying or exchanging federal food stamps (50).
2 As a methodological note, the increase in restitution ordered for crimes against private individuals and businesses was significant, but not as large as appeared in data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing. Using that data, imposition rates were more than twice as high as those obtained using data from the Philadelphia computer files. The difference is probably due to underreporting of cases to the Commission. For example, the Commission does not receive Philadelphia Municipal Court cases.
3 This test likely underestimates the difference between the judges in Philadelphia and the judges in the rest of the state, in that there are almost certainly some Philadelphia judges who did not identify their county and whose responses are therefore included with the non-Philadelphia sample.