Indiana Home Detention Rules: Costs, Violations, and Eligibility

Indiana’s home detention rules let you serve a sentence at your residence instead of in jail, but only under a tight set of conditions written into your court order: you stay home except for specifically approved absences, you pay a daily supervision fee, you submit to electronic monitoring if the court orders it, and you commit no new offenses. Break any of those conditions and you face two separate consequences at once — the court can order you to serve the suspended sentence that was hanging over you, and prosecutors can charge you with felony escape.¹

Where You Can Go and When

The default rule is simple: you stay in your home. Every home detention order in Indiana lists the only reasons you may leave, and the statute is narrow.² Approved absences include:

Traveling to and from a job the court has approved.
Seeking employment, if you are unemployed, on terms the court has approved.
Medical, psychiatric, or counseling appointments approved by the court.
Attending a school or educational program the court has approved.
Attending regularly scheduled religious services.
Court-approved community service or restitution work.
Any other activity the court specifically authorizes.

The pattern matters. Almost every legitimate reason to leave requires advance approval from the court or your supervising agency. You do not get to decide on your own that a trip is important enough. Your probation officer or community corrections case manager will build a written schedule listing when you may leave and where you may go. Changing your residence or your schedule requires prior approval as well.²

Beyond the location rules, the order will require you to commit no new crimes and to comply with any other probation conditions the court sets — often drug and alcohol testing, treatment programs, and regular reporting to your supervising officer.

You must also agree in writing to every requirement before the court can enter the order. Supervision is handled by either the sentencing court’s probation department or a community corrections program, depending on what the court directs.¹

Electronic Monitoring and Your Responsibility for the Device

Indiana law defines a monitoring device as any electronic device that can track your exact location 24 hours a day, alert your supervising agency to violations, and do so with minimal intrusion on others living with you.³ In practice this is usually a GPS ankle bracelet. The statute also allows devices that capture video, audio, or activity information inside the home, but only with written consent from you and from every other resident.

Monitoring is not automatic in every case. The court orders it “if ordered by the court,” and most orders do include it.² When a device is ordered, the court must explain the nature and extent of the surveillance to you and to everyone else living in your home before the order takes effect.⁴

Once the device is on you, keeping it charged and functional is your responsibility. Removing, disabling, or interfering with the device is not just a violation of your order. It is a separate criminal offense under Indiana’s escape statute, covered below.

What Home Detention Costs You

Home detention is not free. The court sets a fee in every order, and it is charged on top of the standard probation user’s fee.² The court cannot exceed the maximum amount specified by the Indiana Department of Correction. There is no single published statewide rate, and daily monitoring fees generally run somewhere between $5 and $25 per day depending on the county and the type of supervision.⁵

Falling behind is a problem. If you miss payments, the supervising agency can report you to the court, which can then modify your conditions or add sanctions.

How Your Time Counts

The upside of home detention is credit. Every day you spend confined at home counts as one day of accrued time toward your sentence, and you can earn good time credit on the same terms as someone who is incarcerated.¹ Those two credits together determine how quickly you finish.

Two limits are worth knowing. You cannot earn educational credit while on home detention, even if attending classes is part of your order. And if you violate a condition, the court can strip away good time credit you have already earned. A single violation can add weeks or months of confinement to what you thought was a fixed timeline.

If you are on pretrial home detention rather than post-conviction home detention, the ratio is different: you earn one day of good time credit for every four days served.⁶

What Happens If You Violate the Rules

A violation triggers two parallel tracks. One is administrative, handled by the court that sentenced you. The other is criminal, and it can lead to a new felony conviction on top of whatever you were already serving.

Administrative Sanctions

When the court finds a violation, it must impose at least one of three responses:⁷

Continue probation with modified, stricter conditions.
Extend your probationary period by up to one year.
Order you to serve all or part of the suspended sentence that was hanging over your probation.

The court must credit you for accrued time and good time you earned before the violation. Ninety compliant days of home detention still count as ninety days. But the court can revoke the good time portion of that credit, which is where the real cost lands.

Escape as a Separate Felony

The part people underestimate: certain home detention violations are prosecuted as the crime of escape. You can be charged with a Level 6 felony if you:⁸

Leave your home without written or documented authorization from your supervising agency.
Stay out past your approved schedule without authorization.
Travel to an unauthorized location.
Remove, disable, or interfere with your monitoring device.

A Level 6 felony carries six months to two and a half years of imprisonment. Using a deadly weapon or injuring someone in the course of an escape raises it to a Level 4 felony. Every home detention order in Indiana must include a written warning that violations may result in an escape prosecution.²

The practical point is that even a quick unauthorized run to the store is technically a felony escape under the statute. Supervising agencies have discretion about how hard to push, but the authority to prosecute is built in.

Who Is Not Eligible

Home detention is not automatic, and two categories of people are shut out or heavily restricted. If another jurisdiction has an outstanding warrant or detainer against you, Indiana cannot place you on home detention.⁹ If your conviction is for a sex offense under IC 35-42-4 or IC 35-46-1-3, home detention is only available through a court-approved program with around-the-clock supervision and GPS monitoring tracking your exact location 24 hours a day.

Moving to Another State While on Home Detention

You cannot simply pack up and move. Transferring supervision across state lines is governed by the Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision, and it is treated as a privilege rather than a right.¹⁰ Indiana requests the transfer; the receiving state investigates and decides whether to accept.

If you have more than 90 days of supervision left, the sending state approves your request, and you are in substantial compliance with your conditions, the receiving state should approve the transfer once your plan checks out. Outside those criteria, both states can still agree to a discretionary transfer if they think it supports your success and public safety.

Do not relocate before the transfer is approved. Moving without authorization violates your home detention order and, as covered above, can be prosecuted as escape. Start the conversation with your supervising officer early, because these transfers typically take weeks to finalize.

1
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-2.5-5 – Home Detention as Condition of Probation
2
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-2.5-6 – Orders for Home Detention; Contents
3
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-2.5-3 – Monitoring Device
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-2.5-11 – Monitoring Devices; Information to Offender
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-2.5-8 – Home Detention Fees
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IN.gov. Credit Time
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-2-3 – Violation of Conditions of Probation
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-44.1-3-4 – Escape
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-2.5-7 – Home Detention; Where Permitted
10
Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision. Starting the Transfer Process