Electronic monitoring (EM) in England and Wales remains surprisingly understudied and undertheorised. Given the strength of New Labour’s commitment to it, heightened in the recent Correctional Services Review, coupled with moves towards the increased use of surveillance in criminal justice, it is not unreasonable to think that EM technologies will one day become a normal and dominant feature of community supervision. This paper reviews recent policy developments regarding EM and seeks to clarify its exact nature as a penalty, scotching the idea that it is incapacitative in the way that both its supporters and critics have claimed. It explores the increasingly ambivalent place of EM on the tariff and develops a typology of compliance, so as to better understand the difference EM might make to community supervision.