Being Sentenced to Electronic Surveillance:

The judiciary system has long considered the offender to be a rational individual. Due to their complexity, new forms of penal sentences, such as electronic surveillance, give reason to redefine this point of view. Allowed to remain in an open environment and to have access to public place, people under electronic surveillance experience a singular way of serving their sentence, especially because they have to comply with a variety of behavioral and relational requirements. This paper attempts to determine if technology and its constraints “portray” the offender’s character in a particular way, at the same time as they characterize the sentence itself and its nature. The “situational” dimension of electronic surveillance is also analyzed to see if this concept can be used to revise the way we view sentences today. This paper also discusses how this specific punishment defines the new spaces, real and virtual, of the offender, as well as the concrete and dematerialized situations applied to the offender and which, due to their strictness, redefine his/her environment and regulate his/her behavior.