I pleaded guilty and have been charged with theft over $5000. I have been sentenced to a conditional sentence of 18 months 12 months in house arrest and after one year probation.

My question is does the house arrest follow the same rules as being sent to a penetentary? Does it follow the same rules, for example good behavior and up to 1/3 of the house arrest being shortened (from 12 months to 8 months?)

Are you paying back the $5000 or so you stole, you don't mention how you stole it. Would be interesting to find out.

Here is wikipedia's definition of house arrest:

House arrest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all. House arrest is a lenient alternative to prison time or juvenile-detention time.

While house arrest can be applied to common criminal cases when prison does not seem an appropriate measure, the term is often applied to the use of house confinement as a measure of repression by authoritarian governments against political dissidents. In that case, typically, the person under house arrest does not have access to means of communication. If electronic communication is allowed, conversations will most likely be monitored. With certain units, the conversations of criminals can be monitored directly via the unit itself.

This is just a generality, gohab (I hate the habs by the way, so its goleafsgo).

You have to check with your probation officer, or the judge, or the court.

And keep your nose clean, this is an international site and I really hate when Canadians are here for theft violations, and it happens far to often, gohabsgo.

Tick

I have never seen house arrest being shortened for good behavior - but I suppose it can happen.

As Tickle said, theft seems to be the Canadian National Sport. Here in the US it's failure to pay credit card debt.

Normally no, 1 year is one year, your attorney cann always file a motion to have it shortened