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Costs and Benefits of Electronic Monitoring for Washington, D.C.

NCJ Number
243336
Author(s)
John K. Roman, Ph.D.; Akiva M. Liberman, Ph.D.; Samuel Taxy; P. Mitchell Downey
Date Published
September 2012
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This study examined the costs and benefits of operating electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders in Washington, DC, compared to standard probation.
Abstract
Weighing together the costs and benefits of implementing EM in DC, there is an 80-percent chance that an EM program will be cost-beneficial and that the average benefit before costs are taken out) is almost $5,000 per participant. Thus, probation with EM is generally cost-beneficial compared to probation without EM. Compared to standard probation, probation augmented with EM is expected to reduce the rearrest rate within 1 year by just over 23.5 percent. Cost-benefit analysis requires that the arrests prevented by the EM program be translated into dollars so they can be compared to what the program costs. The benefits of preventing new crime and new arrests include savings to criminal justice agencies as well as savings from prevented victimizations. The arrests prevented by an EM program are expected to generate $5,300 in benefits per participant on average. Program costs were estimated by combining the estimated length of EM surveillance and the DC-specific costs of implementing an EM program. GPS costs included the cost of the equipment and the cost of monitoring. The analysis used a range of equipment costs from $1.00 a day to $12.00 a day in the simulations used. The length of time on EM was assumed to be between 14 and 90 days. 3 tables, 2 figures, and 15 references