Professor Bill Bales Receives Prestigious NIJ Grant

August 3, 2007
Bill Bales

For more than 20 years, the state of Florida has used radio frequency and global positioning systems as electronic monitoring devices to supervise felony offenders in the community as a method of diverting offenders from the significantly more costly alternative of imprisonment. In the wake of recent federal and state legislation, electronic monitoring will increasingly be used across the country on moderate-to high-risk offenders. Bill Bales has been awarded an eighteen-month grant by the National Institute of Justice to assess the effectiveness of electronic monitoring on offenders in the community. The study will evaluate Florida’s current policies and practices related to electronic monitoring and determine whether it reduces the likelihood of re-offending both during and after electronic supervision. Bales aim is to provide empirical evidence whether electronic monitoring is successful in reducing recidivism and absconding and if it is found to be effective, to provide a more concrete explanation of how and why electronic monitoring works.