House arrest, also known as home incarceration, home confinement, and home detention, is a legal measure whereby a person is “jailed” at his or her own residence. Travel restrictions are severe and generally absolute, though in almost all other respects house arrest is extraordinarily much more lenient alternative to actual imprisonment. It’s normally employed in cases where such imprisonment might seem inappropriate given the nature of the crime or the circumstances of the criminal’s health, for instance.

House arrest is also a favorite tactic of authoritarian governments which adopt it as a half-way measure that may effectively neutralize a dissident while appearing humane. In such instances, communications are also heavily restricted, and it is not unusual for such prisoners to be held incommunicado. Confinement under these circumstances also involves armed guards around the clock. For non-political crimes, however, electronic monitoring devices are almost always employed in lieu of security personnel.

Home incarceration has been tried as far back as the turn of the twentieth century, but could not grow to be a practical approach for widespread use until the invention of electronic monitoring devices that made such sentences inexpensive and easy to carry out and manage. This did not happen till 1983, but home confinement is now quite common and has become standardized. Typically, the subject has to wear a wrist or ankle bracelet (also called a tether) that contains a sensor which monitors how far he or she is from home.

Authorities are immediately summoned when proscribed boundaries are breached. Another method of home incarceration involves the use of automated calling services that record the subject’s voice, checking it against a database of voice patterns. Authorities are notified if the call is not answered or if the voice doesn’t seem to match. As may be imagined, electronic monitoring has made house arrests practical and economical to implement – especially with the stipulation that offenders pay for the costs associated with their own confinement!

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