Summary
Published August 2023
Agencies are exploring smartphone-based supervision apps as a way of providing cost-effective and remote monitoring and support services to persons on community supervision. The growing use of community supervision apps is driven by the desire to support individuals on community supervision, improvements in technology, the ubiquity of smartphones in society, the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., the need to manage individuals remotely), and the increased desire to offer less stigmatizing methods of location tracking. This brief explores smartphone apps and their use in community supervision, explains enabling technologies, discusses functionalities of apps in the context of community supervision, highlights example products, and provides implementation considerations for agencies. This is the fourth document in a four-part series on technologies to support the monitoring and supervision of individuals on pretrial release, probation, and parole (i.e., community supervision).
