Electronic Monitoring of Offenders
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WHAT WORKS CRIME REDUCTION SYSTEMATIC REVIEW SERIES No. 13 A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE ELECTRONIC MONITORING OF OFFENDERS Jyoti Belur1, Amy Thornton1, Lisa Tompson1, Matthew Manning2, Aiden Sidebottom1 and Kate Bowers1 1 UCL Department of Security and Crime Science, University College London, UK 2 Australian National University, College of Arts and Social Sciences Jyoti Belur UCL Department of Security and Crime Science University College London 35 Tavistock Square London WC1H 9EZ [email protected] 1 COPYRIGHT This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. In addition there should be an indication if any changes were made to the original text and there should be no suggestion that the authors or any of their collaborators endorses you or your use. This research was co-funded by the College of Policing and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); Grant title: 'University Consortium for Evidence-Based Crime Reduction'. Grant Ref: ES/L007223/1. 2 June 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 5 2. BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................... 5 TYPES OF EM TECHNOLOGY ...................................................................................................... 10 3. THE APPROACH OF THIS SYSTEMATIC REVIEW ................................................ 10 4. METHODS .......................................................................................................................... 11 SEARCH STRATEGY .................................................................................................................... 11 CRITERIA FOR CONSIDERING STUDIES FOR THIS REVIEW ............................................................ 12 IDENTIFYING RELEVANT STUDIES ............................................................................................... 13 Data extraction and management ..................................................................................................................... 14 Evidence appraisal of the studies ....................................................................................................................... 16 QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS ................................................................................................ 17 Meta-analytic models ........................................................................................................................................ 18 Publication bias .................................................................................................................................................. 19 Outlier analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 19 5. RESULTS ............................................................................................................................ 20 SEARCH RESULTS AND SCREENING ............................................................................................. 20 PROFILE OF STUDIES INCLUDED IN THE META-ANALYSIS ............................................................ 21 Evidence appraisal of the studies included in the meta-analysis ....................................................................... 22 EFFECT: META-ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF ELECTRONIC MONITORING ON RE-OFFENDING ... 24 Overall effect using hazard ratios ...................................................................................................................... 25 Overall effect using proportions of re-offending ................................................................................................ 26 Assessing the influence of publication bias ........................................................................................................ 28 Assessing the influence of evidence quality ....................................................................................................... 28 Assessing the influence of alternative controls .................................................................................................. 29 Assessing the influence of outcome measurement ............................................................................................ 30 Assessing the influence of follow up period ....................................................................................................... 31 MECHANISM .......................................................................................................................... 33 Situational mechanisms ..................................................................................................................................... 33 3 Behavioural and social mechanisms .................................................................................................................. 35 MODERATOR ......................................................................................................................... 38 Assessing the influence of location .................................................................................................................... 38 Assessing the influence of the type of EM technology ....................................................................................... 41 Assessing the influence of EM conditions ........................................................................................................... 41 Assessing the influence of the timing of EM in the CJS process ......................................................................... 43 Assessing the influence of offender type ............................................................................................................ 44 IMPLEMENTATION ............................................................................................................... 45 Technological issues ........................................................................................................................................... 46 Staffing issues .................................................................................................................................................... 48 Programme administration ................................................................................................................................ 49 Information, communication and consent issues ............................................................................................... 49 Response to breach ............................................................................................................................................ 50 ECONOMICS ........................................................................................................................... 51 6. DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................................... 57 7. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................... 62 8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... 63 9. APPENDICES ..................................................................................................................... 64 APPENDIX A – ELECTRONIC DATABASES SEARCHED .................................................................. 64 APPENDIX B – AN EXAMPLE OF THE SEARCH SYNTAX USED IN ELECTRONIC DATABASES .......... 64 APPENDIX C – LIST OF SOURCES SEARCHED FOR GREY LITERATURE .......................................... 65 APPENDIX D – THE FORMULAE USED IN THE META-ANALYSIS ................................................... 66 APPENDIX E – HIERARCHY OF OUTCOME DATA TYPES OF RE-OFFENDING FOR THE STUDIES ELIGIBLE FOR META-ANALYSIS ................................................................................................... 68 APPENDIX F – ADDITIONAL FOREST PLOTS ................................................................................ 69 10. REFERENCES .................................................................................................................... 82 4 1. ABSTRACT In this paper we systematically review the evidence on the effectiveness of the electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders. Guided by the EMMIE framework (Johnson, Tilley and Bowers 2015), the review seeks to: 1) establish whether the EM of offenders is associated with reductions in reoffending; 2) investigate how, in what form(s), and under what conditions the EM of offenders is found to be effective, ineffective, and/or produce unintended effects; and 3) summarise information on the implementation and costs of electronically monitoring offenders. Following a systematic search of the published and unpublished literature, 33 articles were identified that met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 17 studies contained quantitative data on the effectiveness of EM and were included in a meta-analysis. Our findings indicate that, across 17 studies, EM of offenders does not have a statistically significant effect on reducing re-offending. However, EM is associated with statistically