Home confinement, when used by the federal courts as an alternative to pretrial detention or post-conviction incarceration, is proving not only effective, but also cost efficient.
In the federal system, home confinement refers to any judicially or administratively imposed condition requiring a person to remain in his or her residence for any part of the day. Although the use of electronic equipment, usually involving an ankle bracelet transmitter to monitor a participant, is preferred, monitoring also may be by frequent home visits or periodic telephone calls. No matter what the method, home confinement can be an alternative to detention or incarceration. "We've used electronic monitoring for the last five years in this district," says David E. Johnson, chief probation officer for the District of Maryland. "It's quick to set up and very effective incapacitation, both as a deterrent and as punishment, because it is very confining. The people essentially are in community custody."
If home confinement is meant to minimize risk to the public and to re-integrate the offender into a law-abiding lifestyle, or in the instance of pretrial defendants, to assure appearance, then the program is effective. A program participant spends about 120 days in home confinement. Preliminary data compiled by the Administrative Office show that only about 9 percent of home confinement participants violate their confinement. Less than 2 percent of participants commit new criminal offenses during their terms.
"Home confinement," says Thomas Henry, chief pretrial services officer for the District of New Jersey, "is not jail. As one of our supervision tools, it helps to monitor a defendant's activities in the community and restricts movement. Defendants need permission to go out and when they do leave the house, they need to document who they see or meet. Sometimes, just the defendant's knowledge that the court is keeping tabs is enough to make the supervision work."
Home confinement, whether or not electronically monitored, also costs less than incarceration. In 1995 the estimated daily cost of incarceration of a post-conviction offender was over $60 in a federal prison and nearly $40 in a federal half-way house. The average daily cost for a pretrial defendant in a federal detention center also was over $60. By comparison, the average daily cost of home confinement was about $14 for supervision, with an additional $5 for electronic monitoring.
Only 4 percent of the 120,000 pretrial defendants and post-conviction offenders under supervision are in the home confinement program. (This is in contrast to the 96,000 federal prison population.) The number of post-conviction offenders in home confinement is limited by the nature of federal sentencing guidelines, which generally ensure that 75 percent of all persons convicted in federal courts receive prison sentences. The number of pretrial defendants in home confinement also was limited by the statutory requirement that defendants be released with the least restrictive conditions necessary to reasonably assure future court appearance and community safety. Growth in home confinement may occur not at the initial sentencing stage, but as an intermediate sanction for offenders who are already on probation or supervised release. Johnson says, "We like electronic monitoring for cases where the sentencing guidelines require either home confinement or a combination of electronic monitoring and prison time because it lets people continue to work and support their dependents. And in cases where it is used as a means of early release from prison, it allows people to make the transition into the community in a controlled atmosphere."
While home confinement is proving effective, it is not a cure-all. Supervision of participants in home confinement is labor-intensive and time-consuming. More frequent home and community visits are required by officers. Says Henry, "Supervision doesn't stop at 5:00 p.m. on Friday. Our officers may be answering pages all night long, all week long, notifying them that a defendant has moved outside the range of the monitor." Each alert by the electronic monitoring device must be checked with officers handling an average of 10 calls a day. The electronic monitoring equipment rarely fails, so most calls are the result of participant behavior. "Having officers on duty all the time may be unique in the court system, but it fits in with probation work," says Johnson, "where officers are expected to be mobile, out in the community, and involved."