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Abstract: 

Nuno Caiado is a career probation officer and has served as director of national Electronic Monitoring in Portugal since 2003. In this article, Mr. Caiado draws on his experience using electronic monitoring in Portugal to propose a new approach to using EM—a “third way” that combines the best, most effective aspects of traditional monitoring rationales with an enhanced focus on facilitating behavioral change. Caiado suggests that it is limiting to see EM as principally a tool for strengthening the supervision of community sentences, although it can be used in this way. Its potential is much greater: it could be the foundation of “intermediate punishment,” with greater controlling potential than anything probation can manage on its own. It can constitute a framework in which further social support can be given to the offender and has the potential to create synergy by combining “conditioned freedom” with social, educational, and therapeutic approaches to effecting longer term change in an offender’s behavior.

Keywords: Prison overcrowding; re-entry; behavioral change

Affiliations:  1: SMMP, Portugal.