It’s Possible to Reduce Imprisonment and Crime Rates

Rehabilitation services, including addiction and mental-health treatment, can be helpful in many cases but are insufficient. There are already a plethora of these programs and 8 out of 10 prisoners recidivate anyway.

That’s where technology can help. Ankle bracelets linked to the Global Positioning System can be used to track the location of parolees, probationers and violent crime defendants free while awaiting trial. Not only do these e-monitors deter reoffending; they help offenders stay out of prison and encourage attendance at rehab programs such as addiction treatment and job training.

Electronic monitoring has been proven to reduce recidivism. A Justice Department-supported study in Florida involved more than 5,000 medium- and high-risk offenders placed on electronic monitoring over a six-year period. It found that the risk of an offender failing the conditions of their release was about 31% lower among monitored convicts compared to unmonitored ones. This is one of the most successful outcomes known to contemporary penology.

GPS monitoring is especially valuable for protecting victims, witnesses or other likely targets of a released offender. The bracelet software can be tailored to each released offender, for example by demarcating certain no-go areas—geofenced exclusion zones—such as a victim’s residence and workplace. The device would caution the offender with an alarm if he neared the prohibited area and alert the authorities if he crossed the line. Once an offender enters the geofenced area, the GPS tracker can transmit his location and the time of entry.

Without electronic monitoring, the offender is, as a practical matter, on his honor to keep away from his victims. His parole or probation officer is responsible for dozens of other released offenders. The bracelet would provide a much-needed insurance policy against noncompliance.

Countries all over the world, including in Western Europe, rely much more heavily on e-carceration than the U.S. does. Just a few weeks ago, the English Ministry of Justice announced that 2,000 more offenders, including thieves, burglars and robbers, will receive GPS electronic tags when they leave prison to “drive down re-offending rates and protect our communities.”

The biggest obstacle to electronic monitoring of offenders so far is the Fourth Amendment privacy concern raised by state courts, especially the most liberal courts, such as in Massachusetts. But the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on the reasonableness of GPS monitoring, only going so far as to declare that it legally is a search or seizure. And past rulings have acknowledged that parolees and probationers have diminished privacy rights in the interest of public safety.

Why shouldn’t the U.S., a world leader in the development and application of this kind of technology, make full use of it to help resolve one of our most intractable problems?

Mr. Latzer is a professor emeritus at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of “The Myth of Overpunishment: A Defense of the American Justice System and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting the Public.”