In justice and law, house arrest is the situation where 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.
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 of authoritarian governments against political dissidents. In that case, typically, the person under house arrest does not have access to means of communication (telephone). If electronic communication is allowed, conversations will be censored.
Nowadays, in technologically advanced countries, house arrest is often enforced with the use of an electronic sensor locked to the offender's ankle (see ankle bracelet transmitter). The offender will not be able to remove the tracking device. If the subject and the sensor venture too far from the home, the violation is recorded and the proper authorities are summoned.
Notable instances
- Pol Pot Former Premier of Cambodia. He was deposed when Vietnam attacked Cambodia in 1978.
- Zhao Ziyang, purged Communist Chinese leader, was put under house arrest for the last 16 years of his life after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. His movements had to be approved by the Communist Party of China's Central Office, which only allowed him to travel quietly to different places inside China and to play golf.
- Jiang Yanyong, physician who revealed SARS incident in China. He was put under house arrest after requesting the government to investigate the June 4 Tiananmen incident.
- Chia Thye Poh, former leftist Member of Parliament, was arrested without charges and held under detention without trial in 1966. 22 years later, he was released and placed under house arrest in a guardhouse on the resort island of Sentosa and made to pay the rent, on the pretext that he was now a "free" man.
- Riddick Bowe, a former boxing champion, was sentenced to be under brief house arrest after being released from prison.
- Lionel Tate was sentenced under one-year house arrest under the terms of the plea bargain offered in January 2004.
- Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months of house arrest following her release from prison on March 4, 2005.
- Rapper and music producer Dr. Dre spent time under house arrest. He told VH1's "Behind the Music," "The walls started to cave in on me."
- Provision to detain terrorist suspects under house arrest without trial has been made possible by the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005; 10 men are currently (March 2005) under house arrest or other "Control Orders" under the Act [1].
See also
