Research suggests that effective monitoring strategies should incorporate several key practices, including risk assessments, positive and negative reward structures, effective officer-offender interactions, cognitive-behavioral treatments, vocational training, and education. Since the late 1960s, various technological devices have been developed that can potentially assist parole and probation officers in supervising offenders in the community. Technologies relevant to offender supervision in the community include electronic technologies that track location, detect alcohol monitoring, and provide information that assist officers in supervising offenders with various types of needs. Although electronic supervision tools have the potential to achieve significant positive changes in community corrections, they must be assessed objectively to determine what they can and cannot do to assist in achieving the goals of offender community supervision. Effective community corrections supervision is based in interactions between probation/parole officers and individual offenders, and this will continue to be the case. Electronic supervision technologies are tools that can contribute to effective supervision, but they require addressing ethical, administrative, and legal issues. When implemented and operated within an overall strategy of behavioral modification, some electronic supervision tools can enhance community supervision. When used without other key elements of behavioral modification, they have little effect on achieving positive parole and probation outcomes. Corrections administrators must consult research findings in order to determine which types of offenders are best managed with various types of monitoring tools. This article briefly discusses what some of this research has found. 17 notes