History And Effectiveness Of The Electronic Monitoring Of Humans

Histroy

The electronic monitoring of humans found its first commercial applications in the 1980s. Portable transceivers that could record the location of volunteers were first developed by a group of researchers at Harvard University in the early 1960s. The researchers cited the psychological perspective of B. F. Skinner as underpinning for their academic project. The portable electronic tag was called behavior transmitter-reinforcer and could transmit data two-ways between a base station and a volunteer who simulated a young adult offender. Messages were supposed to be sent to the tag, so as to provide positive reinforcement to the young offender and thus assist in rehabilitation. The head of this research project was Ralph Kirkland Schwitzgebel and his twin brother collaborator, Robert Schwitzgebel (family name later shortened to Gable). The main base-station antenna was mounted on the roof of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church; the minister was the dean of the Harvard Divinity School.

Reviewers of the prototype electronic tagging strategy were sceptical. In 1966, the Harvard Law Review ridiculed the electronic tags as Schwitzgebel Machine and a myth emerged, according to which the prototype electronic tagging project used brain implants and transmitted verbal instructions to volunteers. The editor of a well-known U.S. government publication, Federal Probation, rejected a manuscript submitted by Ralph Kirkland Schwitzgebel, and included a letter which read in part: "I get the impression from your article that we are going to make automatons out of our parolees and that the parole officer of the future will be an expert in telemetry, sitting at his large computer, receiving calls day and night, and telling his parolees what to do in all situations and circumstances [...] Perhaps we should also be thinking about using electronic devices to rear our children. Since they do not have built-in consciences to tell them right from wrong, all they would have to do is to push the 'mother' button, and she would take over the responsibility for decision-making."Laurence Tribe in 1973 published information on the failed attempts by those involved in the project to find a commercial application for electronic tagging.

In the U.S., the 1970s saw an end of rehabilitative sentencing, including for example discretionary parole release. Those found guilty of a criminal offense were sent to prison, leading to sudden increase in the prison population. Probation became more common, as judges saw the potential of electronic tagging, leading to an increasing emphasis on surveillance. Advances in computer-aided technology made offender monitoring feasible and affordable. After all, the Schwitzgebel prototype had been built out of surplus missile tracking equipment. A collection of early electronic monitoring equipment is housed at the National Museum of Psychology in Akron, Ohio.

The attempt to monitor offenders became moribund until, in 1982, Arizona state district judge, Jack Love, convinced a former sales representative of Honeywell Information Systems, Michael T. Goss, to start a monitoring company, National Incarceration Monitor and Control Services (NIMCOS). The NIMCOS company built several credit card-sized transmitters that could be strapped onto an ankle. The electronic ankle tag transmitted a radio signal every 60 seconds, which could be picked up by a receiver that was no more than 45 metres (148 ft) away from the electronic tag. The receiver could be connected to a telephone, so that the data from the electronic ankle tag could be sent to a mainframe computer. The design aim of the electronic tag was the reporting of a potential home detention breach. In 1983, judge Jack Love in a state district court imposed home curfew on three offenders who had been sentenced to probation. The home detention was a probation condition and entailed 30 days of electronic monitoring at home. The NIMCOS electronic ankle tag was trialed on those three probationers, two of whom re-offended. Thus, while the goal of home confinement was satisfied, the aim of reducing crime through probation was not.

Effectiveness

The use of ankle bracelets, or other electronic monitoring devices, have proven to be effective in research studies and possibly deter crime.

Several factors have been identified as necessary to render electronic monitoring effective: appropriately selecting offenders, robust and appropriate technology, fitting tags promptly, responding to breaches promptly, and communication between the criminal justice system and contractors. The Quaker Council for European Affairs thinks that for electronic monitoring to be effective, it should serve to halt a developing criminal career.

The National Audit Office in England and Wales commissioned a survey to examine the experiences of electronically monitored offenders and the members of their family. The survey revealed that there was common agreement among survey respondents that electronic monitoring was a more effective punitive measure than fines, and that it was generally more effective than community service. An interviewed offender is credited with saying: "You learn more about other crimes [in prison] and I think it gives you a taste to do other crimes because you've sat listening to other people."

In 2006, Kathy Padgett, William Bales, and Thomas Bloomberg conducted an evaluation of 75,661 Florida offenders placed on home detention from 1998 to 2002, in which only a small percentage of these offenders was made to wear an electronic monitoring device. Offenders with electronic tagging were compared to those on home detention without. The factors thought to influence the success or failure of community supervision, including type of electronic monitoring device used and criminal history, were measured. The results showed that offenders who wore electronic tags were both 91.2 percent less likely to abscond and 94.7 percent less likely to commit new offenses, than unmonitored offenders.