House Arrest in Las Vegas: Rules, Costs, and Violations

House arrest in Las Vegas is an electronic monitoring program that lets you serve a jail sentence at home instead of inside the Clark County Detention Center. It is formally called the Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) Electronic Monitoring Program, run by the Clark County Sheriff through the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.¹ You wear a GPS ankle bracelet, pay a daily fee, and follow a strict schedule of when and where you can leave. Break the rules and you can be sent back to a cell.

Who Qualifies

House arrest is designed for lower-risk defendants, and the court has the final word on who gets in. Your criminal history, the offense in front of the judge, and whether staff believe you will follow the rules all factor in.

Nevada law flatly bars probation, and with it residential confinement as a probation condition, for several offenses. Under NRS 176A.100, the court cannot grant probation to anyone convicted of first- or second-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, sexual assault or attempted sexual assault of a child under 16, or lewdness with a child, and the same bar applies to habitual criminals and habitual felons under NRS 207.010, 207.012, or 207.014.²

Other sex offenses carry a separate hurdle. NRS 176A.110 requires a psychosexual evaluation by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, who must certify in writing that the person does not represent a high risk to reoffend before probation can be granted.² Without that certification, no probation and no house arrest.

What It Costs

You pay for your own monitoring. NRS 211.280 directs the county commission to set an application fee and a daily supervision fee that are “reasonably commensurate” with the program’s actual cost, with participants paying according to their ability.³ If you cannot afford the standard rates, raise it with the court or program administrators; there is no automatic waiver.

For a concrete reference, the Las Vegas Municipal Court’s published fee schedule lists a $100 enrollment fee and $12 per day for house arrest monitoring.⁴ Rates through the LVMPD program or private monitoring companies may differ. If the court orders extra technology, such as an alcohol-detection sensor, expect a surcharge on top of the daily rate.

The fees add up. At $12 per day, a 90-day sentence runs over $1,000 in monitoring charges alone before the enrollment fee. Falling behind on payments can be treated as a program violation, so plan for the full term before you leave intake.

What You Need to Get Approved

Approval depends on proving two things: that you have a stable address, and that staff can account for your time.

Your Residence

You need a home within Clark County with a reliable power source and either a landline or cell signal.¹ Expect to produce a utility bill, mortgage statement, or signed lease. Intake forms also require a full list of everyone living with you, including names, ages, and relationship, so the monitoring team knows who belongs at the address.

Your Schedule

If you work, you must give your supervisor’s name and direct phone number along with a detailed weekly schedule, and employment is verified at intake.¹ That schedule becomes the window when you are authorized to be away from home. If you are unemployed, you still need to submit a schedule covering any court-ordered activities.

What You Can and Cannot Do

The default rule is simple: stay home. Everything else is an exception that has to be arranged in advance.

The LVMPD program allows you to leave home for verified employment, medical appointments with prior approval, and court-required classes such as counseling, school, or AA meetings. Medical emergencies that need immediate care are the only situation where you do not need approval first.¹ If you end up in an ER, call the monitoring office as soon as you reasonably can and keep every piece of hospital paperwork.

Any movement outside your approved zones or outside your scheduled hours triggers an alert. Leaving early, returning late, or straying into a prohibited area all register in real time. There is no quiet grace period, and no way to explain it after the fact without a record.

Nevada law also sets a privacy limit worth knowing: the GPS device can track your location, but it cannot record audio or monitor your activities beyond location data.²

Keeping the Device Working

The bracelet runs on a rechargeable battery, and keeping it charged is on you. Most devices need roughly two hours of charging a day. The unit will vibrate or alert when the battery is low. A dead battery can set off the same alert as leaving home without permission, because the monitoring system cannot tell the difference between a lost signal and an absent participant.

You charge the bracelet with equipment provided at intake and you can move around inside your home while it charges, but you should not leave the residence during the process. If the device or charger fails, contact the monitoring office right away. Do not try to fix it yourself, and never cut the device off.

What Happens If You Violate

This is where people get into serious trouble, often because they assume one slip will be handled leniently.

Violations on Probation Residential Confinement

If you are on residential confinement as a condition of probation, the Chief Parole and Probation Officer can terminate your home confinement and have you held in the county jail pending a court hearing. You have no right to contest that termination before it happens. Once a judge takes up the matter, the court has broad discretion under NRS 176A.630. It can continue your probation with modified conditions, revoke probation outright, or order your original sentence executed in full.² A violation can convert a stay-at-home arrangement into actual prison time.

Tampering With the Device

Intentionally removing or disabling the GPS device, or even attempting to, is a separate criminal offense. Under NRS 176A.410, it is charged as a gross misdemeanor.² A gross misdemeanor in Nevada carries up to 364 days in jail and a fine of up to $2,000, on top of whatever happens with the underlying violation.

Jail Program Revocation

For participants in the LVMPD’s detention-center-based program, violating program rules can result in revocation and a return to the Clark County Detention Center to serve the remainder of the sentence in physical custody.

Credit for Time on House Arrest

Whether electronic monitoring counts toward your sentence depends on when you serve it. Under NRS 176.055, a court may order credit against a jail or prison sentence for time spent in residential confinement before conviction. For felonies, the court has discretion to grant full credit. For misdemeanors, the credit is capped at the lesser of 25 percent of the time spent in residential confinement or 60 days. After conviction, time served on house arrest as part of your sentence counts day for day, because you are serving the sentence rather than waiting on trial.

The operative word is “may.” Pre-conviction credit for residential confinement is not automatic the way jail credit is. If that distinction affects the math of accepting house arrest, raise it with your attorney before you agree to the arrangement.

1
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Clark County Detention Center – House Arrest
2
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code Chapter 176A – Probation and Suspension of Sentence
3
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code Chapter 211 – Local Facilities for Detention
4
City of Las Vegas. Fee Schedule