Electronic tags fail to prevent offenders from dodging curfews
By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
25 April 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=632765
The Independent
Electronic tagging is failing to cut crime, ministers will be warned today
in a report that also exposes dangerous breaches of what has become a
central part of the Government's criminal justice programme.
The findings will embarrass the Home Office which this month signed a
multi-million deal with two private security companies as part of its plan
to double the number of tagging orders by 2008. Research by the probation
union, Napo, has found dozens of offenders are breaching their curfew orders
without being brought back to court.
In one of the worst tagging violations, Peter Williams, 19, was sentenced to
life last month for the murder of the jeweller Marian Bates, 64, shot dead
as she tried to protect her daughter during a raid in Nottingham. Williams
had removed an electronic tag imposed after he was freed from a young
offenders' institute just before the killing, but that was not detected by
Premier Monitoring, one of the firms due to have its contract extended this
month.
In today's report probation workers say that one offender violated his order
34 times before being taken back to court. Another breached 17 times,
including two absences for the full 12-hour curfew period, before action was
taken.
Home Office research found that 75 per cent of offenders aged from 10 to 17
are reconvicted within 12 months of completion of a tagged order. Of those
sentenced to a period in a young offenders' institution, 69 per cent are
reconvicted.
Napo says the total spent by the Home Office on both curfew orders and the
home detention curfew scheme over the past four years is more than £220m.
The cost of supervising individuals by the Probation Service on community
orders or parole is less than half the cost of electronic monitoring, and
the outcomes are better, Napo says.
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