Electronic monitoring: The experience in Australia
| Author | Marietta Martinovic,Lorana Bartels |
| DOI | 10.1177/2066220317697658 |
| Published date | 01 April 2017 |
| Date | 01 April 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
697658EJP0010.1177/2066220317697658European Journal of ProbationBartels and Martinovic
2017
Article
European Journal of Probation
2017, Vol. 9(1) 80 –102
Electronic monitoring: The
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DOI: 10.1177/2066220317697658
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Lorana Bartels
University of Canberra, Australia and University of Tasmania, Australia
Marietta Martinovic
RMIT University, Australia
Abstract
Electronic monitoring (EM) has been introduced in over 30 countries around the world.
In most English-speaking countries, it has moved well beyond experimental status and
become a regularly applied penal measure. Australia has been lagging behind this world
trend, as EM has yet not become dominant in our correctional landscape. This is even
though sanctions that utilise radio-frequency and/or global positioning systems (GPS)
monitoring have existed in Australia for decades. This article critically examines overseas
evaluative findings of EM in relation to recidivism, cost-effectiveness and net-widening,
as well as some of the issues and concerns that are associated with EM. The article then
summarises and explains the limited Australian EM experience to date. It predicts that
increased application of EM in Australia seems likely and should be evidence-based. In
this context, there is an urgent need for increased understanding about the use and
impact of EM in Australia. The article concludes with some observations about the
importance of comparative analysis in this context.
Keywords
Australia, electronic monitoring, GPS, home detention, radio-frequency
Introduction
The pressure of the escalating cost of building and sustaining prisons forced most of the
English-speaking countries during the 1970s and 1980s to search for cheap but effective
community-based sentences. Following the lead of the United States (US), all of these
Corresponding author:
Lorana Bartels, Head, School of Law and Justice, University of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601,
Australia.
Email: lorana.bartels@canberra.edu.au
Bartels and Martinovic
81
countries initiated their own versions of home detention – with or without electronic
monitoring (EM) – in order to divert the increasing number of offenders being sentenced
to prison (Whitfield, 2001). In 2016, about 125,000 offenders were said to be on EM
technology throughout the US at any one time (PEW Charitable Trusts, 2016). Although
there are no publicly available data on the numbers in Australia, the General Manager of
EM in an Australian correctional agency indicated to us that there were about, 1000
offenders in Australia currently subject to EM (personal communication Lis, 2016). In
both countries, however, this represents only a few percent of the ‘potential market’,
which encompasses the sum of the prison and supervised populations.
EM generally involves offenders being fitted with tamper-proof devices that transmit
signals to correctional authorities, allowing them to determine whether the person is
abiding by required conditions. Typically, these conditions involve temporal and geo-
graphical constraints, including curfews, attending places of work, study or treatment, or
avoiding certain locations (Kornhauser and Laster, 2014; Nellis, 2013).
There are two main forms of technology involved in the use of EM: radio-frequency
monitoring, which commenced in the 1980s but became used more extensively from the
early 1990s, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) monitoring, which has been used
since the late 1990s (Martinovic, 2013). A third type of EM, remote alcohol monitoring,
is not considered in this article (for recent discussion, see Graham and McIvor, 2015).
Radio-frequency technology is typically used as a base technology for low- to medium-
risk offenders, while GPS technology, is generally utilised for high-risk offender cohorts,
such as sex offenders and perpetrators of domestic violence. Radio-frequency technol-
ogy is currently used in over 30 countries throughout the world, whereas GPS monitor-
ing was in 2013 used only in the US, New Zealand, Sweden, Spain, Brazil and Australia
(Nellis et al., 2013). More recently, this technology has been adopted in England and
Wales, Scotland, Canada, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.
All states and territories in Australia that use EM have now transferred to using only
GPS monitoring technology. This is because policy-makers have found GPS monitor-
ing’s technical abilities to be very appealing – ‘watching offenders as moving dots on a
street map’, location mapping for archival retrieval, examination of behavioural patterns
and comparison of tracking movements with geographic information systems that dis-
play crime incident data (Bishop, 2010). At that time, however, there was not enough
consideration of how to process all of the generated data, so it has taken some time to
resolve this operationally.
The article commences with a summary of the international research on the evidence
of the effectiveness of EM, namely, in respect of recidivism and cost-effectiveness, as
well as net-widening. Some of the challenges this technology presents are then explored.
In particular, the technological and resource implications are examined and the issues
associated with privatisation and ethical considerations explored. The rest of the article
examines the EM experience to date in Australia. This part of the article commences with
an overview of the Australian penal context. The experience with home detention is then
considered. In particular, the general approach to home detention is presented. This is
then followed by each jurisdiction’s experience with home detention using EM, followed
by an analysis of the trends in the use of EM. The experience with GPS monitoring of sex
offenders is then examined. Some tentative comments about the apparent effectiveness
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European Journal of Probation 9(1)
of the use of EM are made, but there is a dearth of evidence on this issue. This highlights
the urgent need for increased research about the use and impact of EM in Australia. It is
predicted that increased application of EM in Australia seems likely and it is argued that
this should be evidence-based. The article concludes with some observations about the
importance of comparative analysis in this context.
International evaluations of EM
This section of the article critically examines the key methodologically sound evaluative
studies that have assessed EM sanctions’ outcomes related to recidivism, cost effective-
ness and net-widening.
Recidivism
EM sanctions are often implemented with the primary objective of reducing recidivism
(Brown et al., 2007; Hucklesby, 2009). Renzema (2003) conducted a Campbell
Collaboration meta-analysis to explore the effects of radio-frequency monitoring on
recidivism, based on 14 methodologically rigorous studies that had well-established
treatment and control groups. However, no significant reductions in post-sanction recidi-
vism rates were found. Similar findings were reported in a second meta-analysis con-
ducted by Renzema and Mayo-Wilson (2005).
Renzema (2013: 258) recently concluded that the answer to the question ‘[d]oes EM
affect recidivism after it has concluded?’ ‘has to be “if at all, probably not much”’.
However, he referred to two recent studies that ‘have appeared to suggest long-term
recidivism reduction’. The first was an evaluation in Sweden, where treatment and social
support services are combined with radio-frequency monitoring. This found that the
three-year recidivism rate was 26% for offenders subject to radio-frequency monitoring
(Marklund and Holmberg, 2009) in combination with treatment and support, compared
with 38% for the control stand-alone radio-frequency monitoring program. Another
study considered the use of EM in Argentina and found that 22% of former prisoners
reoffended, compared with only 13% of offenders subject to EM (Di Tella and
Schargrodsky, 2013). However, it should be noted that this study related to remandees,
rather than offenders convicted of an offence. A further Campbell Collaboration project
is currently underway.
Contrary to the mixed findings in respect of recidivism following radio-frequency
monitoring, studies on GPS monitoring sanctions’ effect on recidivism have found con-
siderable impacts. Padgett et al. (2006) found that offenders subject to this form of EM
were 95% less likely to commit a new offence than offenders who were not monitored.
A follow-up National Institute of Justice study by Bales et al. (2010) in Florida con-
firmed the earlier findings and indicated that radio-frequency monitoring reduces the
likelihood of failure under community supervision by about 30%, while GPS monitoring
has a further 6% compliance improvement rate when compared with radio-frequency
monitoring (Bales et al., 2010).
Similarly, the New Jersey State Parole Board (2007) GPS monitoring report sug-
gested that the placement of sex offenders onto GPS monitoring contributed to a much
Bartels and Martinovic
83
lower recidivism rate compared with statistics from across the US (0.4% vs 5.3%). Gies
et al. (2012) assessed 516 sex offenders who were either given parole with GPS monitor-
ing or traditional parole. They found that arrest rates were more than twice as high among
offenders on traditional parole compared with those on parole with GPS...
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