Home Confinement and House Arrest

Home confinement and house arrest trace their origins to the New Testament of the Bible, to text (estimated to have been written between 59 and 63 c.e.) that describes the arrest of the apostle Paul for his teachings; he was ordered to remain in his residence, with a military guard ensuring that he would not leave. In the 17th century, the scientist Galileo was similarly arrested during the final years of his life for his writings and views. In contemporary community corrections, home confinement and house arrest reemerged around the 1970s and 1980s. Many states seeking to divert nonviolent offenders from costly jail and prison beds, to reduce jail and prison overcrowding, and to strengthen existing community-based sanctions such as probation or parole—yet still preserve punitive sanctions—implemented home confinement sanctions.

Today, home confinement and house arrest are part of both the pretrial and postconviction management of offenders. The terms home confinement and house arrest are often used interchangeably and allow the offender to serve a portion of his sentence within his or her residence. These sentencing and supervision options serve various goals and objectives in offender management and public safety. Home confinement and house arrest involve the offender's being restricted to his or her residence with minimal (if any) opportunity to leave the residence as an alternative to incarceration. The offender is not allowed to leave the residence, with the exception of approved absences, such as going to work, school, or treatment programs. These options also serve to punish the offender, protect the community from the offender, and serve as a supervision resource for community corrections and court personnel to monitor and enforce an offender's compliance with the terms and conditions of a release or suspended sentence.

In terms of pretrial management, offenders are given the opportunity to be released from custody while they are awaiting trial, often through posting bail and being placed on house arrest. Judges have the discretion to order various terms and conditions with which the offender must comply as a condition of release; noncompliance may result in the revocation of an offender's release. Often home confinement and house arrest are ordered, thereby allowing the offender to be closely supervised while awaiting trial, yet reducing jail overcrowding.

In terms of postconviction management, home confinement and house arrest are intermediate sanctions (punishments that are “midway” between community-based corrections and institutional corrections). They are often a condition of an offender's probation or parole supervision.

Home confinement and house arrest are often coupled with electronic monitoring. Electronic monitoring involves the use of electronic equipment to verify that the offender is complying with the terms and conditions of home confinement by transmitting a signal designating when an offender leaves or enters a residence or when the equipment has been tampered with. If an offender leaves the residence without permission or fails to return to the residence at the time designated by the court or probation officer, or if the offender removes or damages the equipment, an alarm signal is transmitted to an off-site monitoring location, which in turn notifies the probation officer or other professional designated to supervise the offender on house arrest. Whether the signal is for a nonapproved leave, a late return, or damaged equipment, the supervising officer or professional must then travel to the residence or otherwise attempt to locate the offender. In the 1960s, psychologist Ralph Schwitzgebel created an electronic collar that, among many tasks, could track an offender's movements. While tested and patented, the device was never used in corrections. New Mexico judge Jack Love, inspired by an Amazing Spider-Man comic, is often credited as the catalyst behind electronic monitoring (sometimes referred to as electronic house arrest). In the comic, one of the superhero's enemies created a tracking device that would allow him to track Spider-Man's whereabouts at all times. After an unsuccessful attempt to get the New Mexico Department of Corrections to use tracking devices that were already in use to track animals, Judge Love was able to get an engineer to create a tracking device that could be used on offenders. The device would register an alarm. [Page 205]Judge Love sentenced the first person to electronic monitoring in 1983. Today, electronic monitoring can include satellite tracking of offenders (using the technology employed in global positioning devices used in motor vehicles). Electronic monitoring makes home confinement more practical in terms of monitoring the offender's compliance with the terms and conditions of house arrest.

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