NCJ Number
168654
Journal
Journal of Crime and Justice Volume: 20 Issue: 1 Dated: (1997) Pages: 141-160
Date Published
1997
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This study evaluates the experience of Lake County, IN, with electronic monitoring of offenders.
Abstract
Court-ordered home detention and the use of electronic devices to monitor offender compliance has grown significantly over recent years. This study examined 233 adults and 560 juveniles sentenced to the Lake County, IN, program from the beginning of 1990 to the end of 1994. The program sought to determine whether the two groups differed in terms of failure to complete their home detention sentences and to identify the factors related to failure within each group. Findings disclosed that: (1) among adults, failure rates (22 percent) were the same for first-time and repeat offenders; (2) for juveniles, failure rates were 7 percent for first-time offenders and 63 percent among repeat offenders; (3) participants' attitude and perception about their current sentence varied between the two groups and between first-time and repeat offenders within each group; (4) as the sentence length exceeded 180 days the probability of adult failure increased 2.5 times; and (5) current offense, substance abuse history, prior offense history and most recent prior offense were predictors of juvenile program failure. References