Electric monitoring
The focus of the criminal justice system in Canada and all around the world for hundreds of years has been retributive justice. One of the main ideas has been you do the crime, you do the time. Thus, all of our prisons were beginning to fill up and exceed their capacity. This was a result of basically everyone who was found guilty of committing an offence under the criminal code, was sentenced to time in jail or prison. Therefore, "during the 1980's and early 1990's, like many countries, Canada experienced significant prison population growth"(Bonta, Wallace-Capretta & Rooney, 1999: pg.4). This was due to the fact that our prisons were becoming greatly overpopulated and the cost to incarcerate an offender is quite expensive. As a result of this, governments around the world have been seeking ways that they can manage or reduce the prison populations. Hence, governments have been working at developing programs that would allow people who have been convicted of committing a criminal offence to serve their sentence outside of the jail walls. However, by doing this they still had to make sure that they were meeting the needs of the community by allowing them to feel safe and secure while these offenders were ser
NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF ELECTRONIC MONITORING In addition, probation officers do not know where the clients are going during their time away from their home. It is true that the probation officer sets up a schedule with the offender weekly to allow him some time to attend appointments, work or school. On the contrary, the probation officer has no sure way of knowing at that time if the offender is actually going where they say they are going. The probation officer can phone and check up on them but this can be too much work if a probation officer is monitoring twenty to thirty clients on electronic monitoring. Probation officers will phone the place where the offender says that they will be during their time away from home every now and then but they do not have the time to be phoning every clients appointment every day of the week. Thus, some clients may not always go to where they are supposed to be. The alarm will go off on the beeper that the offender's probation officer or supervision officer is wearing. If this happens after six the alarm will go straight to the police station. At this point either the police or the offenders probation officer will phone the offenders home to see why the alarm went off. If the offender does not answer their phone or provide a reasonable explanation as to why the alarm went off, the police will be dispatched to the offender's home to investigate the situation. In addition, if the bracelet is tampered with or cut off, an alarm will be sent to the police and the probation officer so that the situation can be investigated immediately. It is obvious that electronic monitoring has not been made one hundred percent effective yet and that it still has a few glitches in it that can be played to the offenders advantage if they want. I have illustrated this through pointing out the negative aspects about the electronic monitoring system. Thus, there are a few areas in the electronic monitoring program that could be improved to help make the program more effective. Even if an offender is unable to find employment, research has shown that having an offender on electronic monitoring is cheaper than incarcerating them. As stated earlier it can be very expensive to house an offender in a prison or jail. Another area that could be improved is that more random house checks should be established by either the police or the probation officer/supervision coordinator. While the offender is staying in their home there is no way of telling what that offender is doing. The offender could be drinking, doing drugs or participating in more illegal activities in the home and the police or probation officer/supervision coordinator may not even know. In addition, the offender is allowed to have visitors in their home while on electronic monitoring so they could have friends come over to drink. Thus, there needs to be more random checks on the offender in their home. Personally, since I have been working in probation I have rarely heard of or seen a police officer or probation officer/supervision coordinator randomly stop by the offenders residence. The only time that they do is to do the odd curfew check and if they are responding to an alarm that the offender has either tampered with their bracelet or left their restricted area where they are supposed to be residing while on the bracelet. Therefore, the offender could be basically doing anything while they are on electronic monitoring. In addition, we are seeing governments taking on alternative measures to sentencing convicted offenders. "The growing trend of determinate sentencing or 'truth-in-sentencing' laws over the last decade has greatly changed and varied the role of the courts, probation departments, and the entire criminal justice system"(Leitenberger, 2000: pg.19). Thus, we see the development of community based sentence orders such as probation, parole, conditional sentences, electronic monitoring, bail etc. Thes
Some common words found in the essay are:
PROGRAM IMPROVED, Corrections Division, ELECTRONIC MONITORING, Herald June, Wallace-Capretta Rooney, Amsterdam United, electronic monitoring, Wallace Capretta, Jaw Region, British Columbia, JUSTICE SYTEM, probation officer, placed electronic, placed electronic monitoring, offender placed, probation officer/supervision, officer/supervision coordinator, electronic monitoring program, probation officer/supervision coordinator, monitoring program, offender electronic monitoring, offender electronic, 1995 pg, community based, probation officer supervision,
Approximate Word count = 6008
Approximate Pages = 24 (250 words per page double spaced)
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