house arrest

 

In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all. House arrest is a lenient alternative to prison time or juvenile-detention time.

While house arrest can be applied to common criminal cases when prison does not seem an appropriate measure, the term is often applied to the use of house confinement as a measure of repression by authoritarian governments against political dissidents. In that case, typically, the person under house arrest does not have access to means of communication. If electronic communication is allowed, conversations will most likely be monitored or even censored.

Home detention provides an alternative to imprisonment and aims to reduce re-offending while also coping with expanding prison numbers and rising costs. It allows eligible offenders to retain or seek employment, maintain family relationships and responsibilities and attend rehabilitative programs that contribute towards addressing the causes of their offending.

The terms of house arrest can differ. Some terms can require the convict to be inside his or her private residence no matter what. Others allow for certain exceptions, such as being allowed movement in as much as functions for the court or the prisoner's essentials. Examples of such movement can include visits to the probation officer or police station, or being allowed to go to the office of a doctor or dentist. Some house arrests also permit the convict to frequent gymnasiums to keep their health up, as most prisons do have gyms and recreational areas included within their walls. Another house arrest option is to allow the prisoner to frequent shops and supermarkets on the basis that it is necessary to resupply the house periodically.

Nowadays, in technologically advanced countries, house arrest is often enforced with the use of an electronic sensor locked to the offender's ankle (called an ankle monitor). If the subject and the sensor venture too far from the home, the violation is recorded and the proper authorities are summoned. The electronic surveillance together with frequent contact with their probation officer and checks by the security guards provides for a secure environment. To discourage tampering, many ankle monitors can now detect attempted removal.

Notable Instances

Algeria

• Ahmed Ben Bella Former President of Algeria deposed by Houari Boumédiènne in 1965, went to exile in 1980.

Argentina

• Jorge Videla Former President of Argentina

Burma

• Aung San Suu Kyi, Pro-democracy activist, has been under house arrest for extended periods. She is presently confined to her home in Rangoon yet again, under her 11th period of house arrest. Each of her eleven house arrests has been declared arbitrary by the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
• Ne Win Former military commander of Burma. He was deposed in 1988 and put under house arrest in 2001.

Cambodia

• Pol Pot Former Premier of Cambodia. He was deposed when Vietnam attacked Cambodia in 1978.

Chile

• In January 5, 2005, former dictator Augusto Pinochet was placed under house arrest by orders of the Supreme Court of Chile.

People's Republic of China

• Zhao Ziyang, purged Communist Chinese leader, was put under house arrest for the last 16 years of his life after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. His movements had to be approved by the Communist Party of China's Central Office, which only allowed him to travel quietly to different places inside China and to play golf.
• Jiang Yanyong, physician who revealed SARS incident in China. He was put under house arrest after requesting the government to investigate the June 4 Tiananmen incident.

Egypt

• Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen), Iraqi scientist working in Egypt. In 1011, he feigned madness in fear of angering the Egyptian caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. He was kept under house arrest until the caliph's death in 1021.
• Muhammad Naguib, Former President of Egypt. He led a military coup in 1953 and deposed the former King Farouk. He was in turn deposed by Gamal Nasser in 1954.

Indonesia

• Sukarno, First President of Indonesia. He was deposed in 1967 by General Suharto.

Iran

• Mohammed Mossadeq , Former Premier of Iran. Was deposed in 1953.
• Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri was sentenced to house arrest in 1997.

Israel

• Mordechai Vanunu , an Israeli whistleblower, is under house arrest for indefinite time of time since 2003.

New Zealand

• At sentencing the Judge can grant offenders who receive a short-term sentence (two years or less) leave to apply for home detention. This is called front-end home detention – i.e. it is applied for at the beginning of a sentence. If it is deferred by the Judge, an offender has two weeks to apply, during which time they will be granted bail. Offenders serving long-term sentences can apply for back-end home detention five months before their Parole Eligibility Date, though, if granted, they won’t be released until three months before their PED.

Nigeria

• Shehu Shagari, President of Nigeria was placed under house arrest on December 31 1983, following a military coup which ousted his government (see: Nigerian Second Republic ).
• General Muhammadu Buhari, Military Head of State was confined to his residence following the palace coup which ejected him from office.
• MKO Abiola, was placed under house arrest after he declared himself the rightful winner of the 1993 presidential elections, against the wishes of the Ibrahim Babangida military junta. He was detained for five years till his death in 1998 [1].

Pakistan

• Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Former Premier and President of Pakistan. He was deposed in 1977 in a military coup led by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq he was put to trial and hanged later in 1979.

Roman Catholic Church

• Galileo Galilei was put under house arrest for his belief in Copernicus's theory of the sun in the middle of the universe and all the planets and stars revolving around it. He stayed under house arrest until 1642 when he died.

Singapore

• Chia Thye Poh, former leftist Member of Parliament, was arrested without charges and held under detention without trial in 1966. 22 years later, he was released and placed under house arrest in a guardhouse on the resort island of Sentosa and made to pay the rent, on the pretext that he was now a "free" man.

South Africa

• Bram Fischer, former South African Communist Party leader, was diagnosed with cancer while in prison and was placed under house arrest due to pressure from the anti-apartheid groups.

Soviet Union

• Former Premier Nikita Khrushchev was placed under house arrest for the seven years before his death after being deposed in 1964.

Tunisia

• Habib Bourguiba, Former President of Tunisia. He was deposed in a military coup in 1987.
• Muhammad VIII al-Amin, former king of Tunisia, he was deposed in 1957 by Habib Bourguiba.

United Kingdom

• Provision to detain terrorist suspects under house arrest without trial has been made possible by the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005; 10 men are currently (March 2005) under house arrest or other "Control Orders" under the Act.^[1]

United States

• The last Hawaiian queen Liliuokalani had her prison sentence commuted to imprisonment in an upstairs bedroom of Iolani Palace until she was released in 1896.
• Riddick Bowe, a former boxing champion, was sentenced to be under brief house arrest after being released from prison.
• Lionel Tate was sentenced under one-year house arrest under the terms of the plea bargain offered in January 2004.
• Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months of house arrest following her release from prison on March 4, 2005.
• Debra Lafave, a former middle-school teacher, was sentenced to house arrest on November 22, 2005 for having sex with a 14-year-old pupil.
• Paris Hilton, an heiress and socialite, was re-assigned to house arrest on June 7, 2007, but was ordered back to prison on June 8, 2007 to serve the remainder of her 45-day sentence for violating probation from a prior DUI conviction.
• Dr Dre, one of the founding fathers of gangsta rap and former member of the influential hip-hop group NWA was sentenced to a house arrest after breaking a jaw of a record producer. He told VH1's Behind the Music, "The walls started to cave in on me."

See also

• Internment
• Curfew
• Exile
• Grounding (punishment)

Notes

1. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4342717.stm

New Zealand Corrections Department NationalHomeDetention.com - Provider of house arrest solutions

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