"Introducing Disruptive Technology to Criminal Sanctions: Punishment by Computer Monitoring to Enhance Sentencing Fairness and Efficiency"

The title of this post is the title of this paper recently posted to SSRN authored by Mirko Bagaric, Dan Hunter and Colin Loberg.  Here is its abstract:

The United States criminal justice system is the most punitive on earth.  The total correctional population is nearly seven million, equating to a staggering one in thirty-eight adults.  Most of the correctional population comprises offenders who are on parole or probation.  The financial burden this imposes on the community is prohibitive.  Further, a high portion of offenders who are on parole or probation offend during the period of the sanction.  This Article proposes an overdue solution to the crisis which exists in relation to the imposition of criminal sanctions.  The solution is especially timely given that there is now a considerable consensus emerging among lawmakers and the wider community that reforms need to be implemented to reduce the cost of criminal sanctions and improve their effectiveness.  Moreover, the United States Sentencing Commission has recently proposed an amendment to increase the availability of sentences which are alternatives to incarceration. 

With little hint of exaggeration, the sentencing system remains in a primitive state when it comes to adopting technological advances.  This Article seeks to address this failing as a means of overcoming the main shortcomings of current common criminal sanctions.  Forty years ago, it was suggested that the most effective way to deal with crime was to assign a police officer to watch over the every move of each offender.  The proposal was dubbed “cop-a-con”.  This would nearly guarantee that offenders did not re-offend, while eliminating the adverse consequences of prison.  This proposal was manifestly unviable due to its excessive costs.  Technological advances now make the concept achievable in a cost-effective manner.

It is now possible to monitor the locations and actions of individuals in live time and to detect crime as it is in the process of being committed.  Adapted properly to the criminal justice system, technology has the potential to totally reshape the nature and efficacy of criminal sanctions.  The sanctions which are currently utilized to deal with the most serious offenders, namely imprisonment, probation and parole can be replaced with technological monitoring which can more efficiently, effectively and humanely achieve the appropriate objectives of sentencing.  Technological disruption in the criminal justice sector is not only desirable, it is imperative.  Financial pressures and normative principles mandate that the United States can no longer remain the world’s most punitive nation.  The sanction suggested in the Article (“the monitoring sanction”) has the potential to more efficiently and economically impose proportionate punishment than current probation and parole systems, while enhancing public safety.