*[Best tagline ever courtesy of House Arrest Services]

House arrest is “cool” because they get to charge you rent for being in jail. They should just go ahead and make jails like hotels instead though. Baltimore has a really scary looking jail downtown.

Wikipedia:

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.

“Free Advice“:

House arrest (with or without electronic monitoring) allows a person who is sentenced to a jail term to spend the time at his home as an alternative to being physically confined to jail.

Home confinement is monitored using an electronic sensor strapped to an offender’s ankle and linked by telephone lines to a central computer which emits a continuous signal. If this signal is interrupted by the offender going beyond the authorized radius of the receiver, the host computer records the date and time of the signal’s disappearance. The computer will also record the date and time the signal resumes. If a signal interruption occurs during a period when the parolee should be at home, the violation is checked by the parole officer and the offender could be subject to arrest.

OOH SCARY! Why doesn’t the government just call this what it is: “You’re grounded, young man!”

{See also: The SecondLife Cubicle Jail Cell of The Future}