NCJ Number
119129
Date Published
1988
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Home detention represents a form of punishment that lies between incarceration and community-based programs in its nature and that offers the most potential for addressing both the offender's need to become a responsible and law-abiding citizen and the community's need for safety.
Abstract
This approach has been used in past history, which has many examples of the use of partial incapacitation. One example is the Australian colony of 200 years ago, in which the convicts that made up 40 percent of the population were assigned to work for free settlers or the marine corps. This system transferred the cost of keeping convicts from the government to private citizens while diluting the anti-social impact of convicts throughout the community. Unfortunately, home detention is currently regarded as an alternative to incarceration rather than as a form of partial incapacitation. However, both philosophic and pragmatic considerations make it a desirable approach. Its two forms are front-end programs in which offenders are specifically sentenced to home detention or intensive supervision and back-end programs that substitute for or follow a period of full-time imprisonment. Thirty States in the United States are using home detention, and the New Jersey program is one of the more visible ones. Electronic surveillance using the telephone or a device worn by offenders is part of many home detention programs. Chart and 18 references.