Home Detention Curfew

Home Detention Curfew is a detention scheme in the United Kingdom whereby certain short-term criminals are released from prison several weeks to months before the completion of their sentence to allow them to integrate back into society. The scheme is used for prisoners who are sentenced to terms greater than three months. Long term prisoners (these serving a sentence of more than four years but excluding life sentence prisoners) may NOT be considered for release on the scheme. HDC is not typically applied to sex offenders or violent criminals sentenced under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Prisoners are assessed for risk prior to being released under this scheme and fitted with an electronic monitoring tag to ensure that they do not violate the terms of their curfew. Typically, such prisoners are required to remain in their designated home between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Further reading

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 a certain residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all. House arrest is an alternative to prison time or juvenile-detention time.

While house arrest can be applied to 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 any means of communication. If electronic communication is allowed, conversations will most likely be monitored. With some electronic monitoring units, the conversations of prisoners can be directly monitored via the unit itself.

History

Judges have imposed sentences of home confinement, as an alternative to parole, as far back as the 1900s. Galileo was confined to his villa following his infamous trial in the 1600s. But it did not become a widespread alternative to imprisonment until electronic monitoring devices made it inexpensive and easy to manage. The first-ever court sentence of house arrest with an electronic bracelet was in 1983.