ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ethics of monitoring and the criteria for proportionate monitoring in the penal and health care domains. The first part of the chapter provides a working criterion of proportionality geared to the concept of a legitimate purpose realisable by a range of available means. It goes on to discuss legitimate purposes to which monitoring is put in the two domains. First, monitoring for penal purposes is discussed and then health care monitoring. It argues that established uses of electronic monitoring (EM) for penal purposes in Europe are generally proportionate, but that proportionateness is less easily achieved in care contexts. This is because EM is sometimes in tension with the purpose it officially serves – maintaining autonomy – and sometimes because the purposes it in fact serves give undue weight to third parties.
