Editing Electronic tagging (section)

== Criticisms ==
The electronic monitoring of a person, on whom an electronic tag is fitted, does not physically restrain this person from leaving a certain area, nor does it prevent this person from {{nowrap|re-offending{{tsp}}{{mdash}}{{tsp}}}}the primary aim of probation. Furthermore, the public perception of home detention is that it is a form of lenient punishment.<ref>{{cite book | author = Mike Nellis, Kristel Beyens & Dan Kaminski |title=Electronically Monitored Punishment: International and Critical Perspectives |year= 2013 |publisher= Routledge |isbn=9781136242786 |pages= 95}}</ref>

In the US in 1990, Ronald Corbett and [[Gary T. Marx]] criticized the use of electronic monitoring in a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the [[American Society of Criminology]], [[Baltimore]]. In the paper, which was later published in the Justice Quarterly, the authors described 'the new surveillance' technology as sharing some ethos with the information-gathering techniques found in maximum-security prisons, thereby allowing them to diffuse into the broader society. They remarked that 'we appear to be moving toward, rather than away from, becoming a "maximum-security society".<ref name="Corbett_Marx">Ronald Corbett and Gary T. Marx, 'Critique: No Soul in the New Machine: Technofallacies in the Electronic Monitoring Movement' (1991) Justice Quarterly</ref> The authors acknowledged the [[data mining]] capacity of electronic monitoring devices when they stated that "data in many different forms, from widely separated geographical areas, organizations, and time periods, can easily be merged and analyzed".<ref name="Corbett_Marx"/>

In 2013, it was reported that many electronic monitoring programs throughout the US were not staffed appropriately.<ref name="Osher">{{Cite web|url=https://www.denverpost.com/2013/06/08/electronic-monitoring-of-colorado-parolees-has-pitfalls/|title=Electronic monitoring of Colorado parolees has pitfalls|date=2013-06-08|website=The Denver Post|language=en-US|access-date=2019-10-22}}</ref> George Drake, a consultant who worked on improving the systems said "Many times when an agency is budgeted for electronic-monitoring equipment, it is only budgeted for the devices themselves". He added that the situation was 'like buying a hammer and expecting a house to be built. It's simply a tool, and it requires a professional to use that tool and run the program.' Drake warned that programs can get out of control if officials do not develop stringent protocols for how to respond to alerts and do not manage how alerts are generated: "I see agencies with so many alerts that they can't deal with them," Drake said. "They end up just throwing their hands up and saying they can't keep up with them." In Colorado, a review of alert and event data, obtained from the Colorado Department of Corrections under an open-records request, was conducted by matching the names of parolees who appeared in that data with those who appeared in jail arrest records. The data revealed that 212 parole officers were saddled with the duty of responding to nearly 90,000 alerts and notification generated by electronic monitoring devices in the six months reviewed.<ref name="Osher"/>