Effect of Electronic Monitoring on Social Welfare Dependence

Abstract

Research SummaryWe studied the effect on social welfare dependence of serving a sentence under electronic monitoring rather than in prison using Danish registry data and two policy shifts that extended the use of electronic monitoring in Denmark. We found that electronic monitoring is less harmful than imprisonment, at least for younger offenders, whereas it does not leave older offenders worse off than imprisonment. Policy ImplicationsAs the United States moves toward noncustodial alternatives to imprisonment, policy makers might benefit from knowledge on experiences from other contexts. The experiences from Denmark are clear: Electronic monitoring is less harmful than imprisonment to the life-course outcomes of offenders. Because electronic monitoring could be less costly for the corrections administrations than imprisonment, efforts to extend the use of electronic monitoring in the United States could be accelerated.

Educational Outcomes After Serving with Electronic Monitoring: Results from a Natural Experiment

“…In times with large prison populations and discussions regarding downsizing, it is important to recognize that alternative sanctions can have positive influences on young offenders' future outcomes, both in terms of recidivism (Di Tella and Schargrodsky 2013;Jørgensen 2011;Marie 2015) and in regards to labor market participation (Andersen and Andersen 2014) and educational outcomes. These findings are important in order to evaluate the returns of introducing noncustodial sanctions and to inform future policy decisions and discussion on electronic monitoring.…”

“…The introduction of new alternative sanctions restricted to convictions of a certain length could affect the judges' sentencing behavior. However, this does not appear to be the case in Denmark in relation to the EM-program, since the overall distribution in sentence length did not change around the EM-reform (Andersen and Andersen 2014), and there are no substantial differences in types of crimes or sentence lengths between the two groups of offenders convicted before and after the reform (see Table 1). Hence, there is no evidence of the introduction of the EM-program as an offer to young offenders leading to systematic changes in the judges' sentencing behavior, either towards lower or higher prison terms, in the years 2006-2009.…”

“…A study of early EM releases from prisons in England using a regression discontinuity design finds a reduction in the probability of re-arrest of ex-prisoners between 20 and 40 % within 2 years (Marie 2015). Finally, two studies exploit the reforms that introduced and extended the use of electronic monitoring in Denmark and document negative effects on recidivism (Jørgensen 2011) and positive effects on subsequent labor market outcomes (Andersen and Andersen 2014). This brief survey of recent studies on electronic monitoring reflects a general trend in the literature evaluating non-custodial sanctions.…”

“…In times with growing prison populations, EM has been introduced in many Western countries as a substitute for imprisonment or as part of an early release program in order to reduce expenditures in the prison system (Renzema and Mayo-Wilson 2005). Although EM has been implemented in many different legal systems over the last three decades, there is still a lack of empirical knowledge on the effects of this non-custodial alternative to imprisonment (Andersen and Andersen 2014).…”

Better at Home than in Prison? The Effects of Electronic Monitoring on Recidivism in France

“…The implementation of EM in Denmark also offers quasi-experimental evidence from Europe, but existing studies focus on the effect of EM on social welfare dependence (Andersen and Andersen, 2014) or educational outcomes (Larsen, 2016), not future criminal activity.…”