Keeping tabs on criminals [electronic monitoring]

In the United States last year, there were 1.4 million offenders in prison-twice as many as there were 10 years ago-and another four million out on parole or probation. Criminal justice costs have kept pace: they now come to some US $90 billion a year, about a third as much as the bill for national defense. Yet bulging law enforcement budgets have made little dent in crime and none, it would seem, in the fears of law-abiding taxpayers. Public safety has become the prime concern of city and suburban residents, according to many recent polls. Technology could do more in their defense, an especially hopeful area being the electronic monitoring of the movements of victimizers. Here, the authors describe how public safety could be improved and incarceration costs cut if new electronic monitoring schemes were put into effect