Report EM 2005 - E - CEP, the European Organisation for Probation

complicated concept to analyse and measure). There seemed to be a consensus that
where EM had been used to facilitate release from prison, costs were coming down;
where it was used as a community sanction the cost-implications were less clear. There
was some evidence that EM did reduce the use of imprisonment, but this was not
evidence that net-widening never occurred.
Among his general conclusions, Professor Albrecht argued that the diversity apparent in
the use of EM across Europe reflected the diversity of European criminal justice systems
in general. He anticipated that while change of some sort would be constant in these
systems, sometimes in the direction of harmonisation, this diversity, reflecting historical
traditions and country-specific problems, would continue for the foreseeable future. EM
would be used to address particular issues in particular jurisdictions. Countries would
nonetheless be prepared to learn from each other’s experience of EM, as with other
penalties and sanctions.
3.2 Electronic Monitoring in the USA
Peggy Conway, consultant to the EM industry, and editor of the Journal of Offender
Monitoring
Peggy Conway gave a necessarily brief account of the development of EM in the USA,
pointing out that because of the largely federated nature of American criminal justice –
its variation across 50 different states – it was impossible to generalise about any
development in criminal justice. EM was no exception. In addition, no one agency in the
US had responsibility for maintaining an overview of how EM had developed, and what
the trends and directions were. Far less systematic evaluative research had been done
on EM in the US than seemed to have been done in Europe. Much had indeed been
written on EM in the US, but there was far less integration of researchers and policymakers
there than here.
In Ms Conway’s estimation, the first wave of EM’s development had been dominated by
pre-trial schemes. Latterly, there had been an emphasis on “re-entry schemes” – release
from prison schemes linked to parole. This wave of development was largely due to fiscal
considerations affecting many states. The mass use of imprisonment was deemed to be
too expensive. Policy-makers were looking for ways to pare down the cost of
imprisonment and early release programmes were seen as one way of doing this – as
well as making the release process seem tougher – without conceding to the public that
prison was being overused. It was mostly in the re-entry market that GPS satellite
tracking had taken off. Compared to what she had picked up about Europe, there was no
official talk in the USA of needing to reduce prison populations, and no attempt to
conceive of EM as an alternative to prison.
The pattern of EM’s development in the USA had been significantly affected by vendors –
some aggressive marketing had undoubtedly occurred. The end result had not, however,
made a great deal of difference to American penal practice, which had been dominated
by imprisonment. The American Probation and Parole Association had also promoted EM
and did have some ownership of it as a probation tool. Its website was a useful source of
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