Study reveals conflicting attitudes about electronic monitoring

TT Note: Do the crime, pay the time. I guess the question becomes where you pay it?

Minority college students have significantly different attitudes about electronic monitoring devices used to punish criminal offenders than white students, according to a new study by Brian Payne, chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Georgia State University.

Payne, who surveyed 599 students at two universities in southeastern Virginia, found that while white students believe that the tracking device is too lenient, black students are more likely to agree that electronic monitoring is a severe punishment that turns the home into a prison.

“In these tough budget times there have been some states that have looked at jails and prison populations and say we are letting you out in 90 days, but we’re putting you on electronic monitoring,” Payne said. “It’s a growing type of technology and it would help if the public had a better understanding about the sanction and saw it as a viable tool that would assist with the reintegration of offenders at some point and not something that was a slap on the wrist.”

Matthew DeMichele of University of Kentucky, Nonso Okafo of Norfolk University, and Payne surveyed students with questions such as whether electronic monitoring deters crime or if the tool ensures that an offender is punished.

Among the findings, the researchers revealed that 45 percent of white students were more likely to agree that electronic monitoring deters misconduct, as compared to 37 percent of blacks.
Many of the attitudinal differences among the students can be attributed to perceptions about the inequality that minorities see in the application of the electronic monitoring, Payne said. For instance, nearly half of the black students said that the punishment was unfair because wealthier offenders stay in nicer arrangements. Black students also agreed that electronic monitoring perpetuates a racist system, discriminates against the poor and is more likely to be given to wealthy offenders.

Payne, who has been studying electronic monitoring for more than a decade, has also studied offender perceptions of being on parole with a tracking device.

“Offenders that we talked to said that it was better than jail, but it was like jail,” Payne said. “But since then there have been studies interviewing people who were in prison, and those people were saying they prefer to be in prison than on probation. Particularly minorities and those who had prior experience in the criminal justice system were the ones that tended to see prison more favorably than sanctions like electronic monitoring.”

Understanding the differences in the way that different groups perceive electronic monitoring can aid policymakers to develop public awareness campaigns and counter misconceptions, Payne said. The study may also help probation officers better understand the way perception plays a role in how offenders experience punishment and how cultural influences may dictate the probation or parole experience.

“Like other kinds of sanctions electronic monitoring is sometimes used when it shouldn’t be used,” Payne said. “It’s not a perfect kind of sanction and it shouldn’t be expected to solve problems on its own. It requires a great deal of effort from probation parole officers and it’s just one tool that they have available.”

Payne’s study was published in the Journal of Criminal Justice. He is currently working on a study about the use of global positioning systems and sex offenders.

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One in Every 31 U.S. Adults Were in Prison or Jail or on Probation or Parole in 2007

TT Note: So who do you know? These numbers are just downright scary.

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 7.3 million men and women were under correctional supervision in the nation's prisons or jails or on probation or parole at yearend 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. About 3.2 percent of the U.S. adult population, or one in every 31 adults, was incarcerated or under community supervision at the end of 2007. This percentage has remained stable since reaching more than 3 percent in 1999.

About 70 percent (5.1 million) of the adults under correctional supervision at yearend 2007 were supervised in the community (either on probation or parole), and 30 percent (2.3 million) were incarcerated in the nation's prisons or jails. Offenders held in custody in state or federal prisons or local jails increased by 1.5 percent since yearend 2006. The population under community supervision (either on probation or parole) increased 2.1 percent.

State and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction or legal authority over nearly 1.6 million prisoners, an increase of 1.8 percent since yearend 2006. Though the number of prisoners increased, the rate of growth, compared to the average annual growth from 2000 to 2006, slowed by 0.2 percent. The imprisonment rate continued to increase, reaching 506 persons per 100,000 U.S. residents.

During 2007, the federal prison population experienced the largest absolute increase of 6,572 prisoners, followed by Florida (5,250), Kentucky (2,457), and Arizona (1,945). Combined, these increases resulted in 59 percent of the overall change in the U.S. prison population.

Federal prisons operated at 136 percent of capacity in 2007. State prisons operated between 96 percent of highest capacity and 113 percent of lowest capacity, compared to between 100 percent and 115 percent in 2000. This trend indicates that prison populations are increasing at the same rate of capacity.

More than eight in 10 offenders supervised in the community at yearend 2007 were on probation (4,293,163), while less than two in 10 offenders were on parole (824,365). About one in every 45 adults in the U.S. was on probation or parole at the end of the year.

The total community supervision population grew by 103,100 offenders during 2007. While the parole population (up 3.2 percent) increased at a faster pace than probation (up 1.8 percent) in 2007, probation accounted for three-quarters (77,800) of the growth in offenders under community supervision.

Entries to probation supervision (2.4 million) exceeded exits from supervision (2.3 million) in 2007. Similarly, entries to parole supervision (555,900) also exceeded exits from parole (531,400) during 2007. A total of 1,180,469 parolees were at risk of being re-incarcerated in 2007, which included those under parole supervision on January 1 or who entered parole during the year. Of these parolees, about 16 percent were re-incarcerated in 2007.

The report, Prisoners in 2007 (NCJ-224280), was written by BJS statisticians Heather C. West and William J. Sabol, Ph.D., and Probation and Parole in the United States, 2007 - Statistical Tables (NCJ- 224707) was prepared by BJS statisticians Lauren E. Glaze and Thomas P. Bonczar.

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