How Much Does EM Cost?
The cost for an electronic monitoring program varies, but typically it costs about 1/10th of the cost of incarceration. The most significant cost of electronic monitoring is not the technology, but the monitoring services provided by the people required to administer the program. The monitoring services and therefore the cost of the program depend on a range of factors including:
- Overall compliance of the caseload
- Response and speed of response required to a range of violations
- Requirements for home visits
- Definition of a violation
- Length of sentence
- Reporting needs to various agencies
- Technology selected
- System redundancy
- Level of penalties linked to either service failure or system outages
- Staff salary
