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Just like a ball and chain...
Introducing the electronic ball & chain... A little black box
attached to the ankle or wrist marks the start of new curfew laws
in Britain. Home Secretary Michael Howard has announced trials
of electronic tagging of 'offenders' which he believes will
eventually become the principal community sentence with up to
20,000 orders imposed a year. People will be confined to their
homes for between two and 12 hours a day for up to six months. If
they move out of the range of a designated telephone the black
box will transmit a signal down to a central monitoring centre.
Securicor have 'won' the z1.4 million contract for the trials in
Manchester, Reading and Norfolk to begin in June of this year.
They will be required to consider all violations of a curfew
order and take appropriate action. Serious violations would
include "being absent from home for more than 24 hours without a
reasonable excuse" which would trigger immediate court action -
supervised by Securicor. Other violations include "interference
to the monitoring system caused by the actions of others such as
pets, children or other householders. Examples could be the
disconnection of the power supply or telephone link; the phone
repeatedly left off the hook or repeated minor tamperings".
Not only do Securicor have no experience of dealing with
offenders, they face huge practical problems. For a kick off,
"suppliers" must first attempt to install a telephone if one is
not already available but their staff have no legal right of
entry to the offender's home and can only visit with consent.
Secondly the tags have got to be difficult to remove - it was
tried in Nottingham four years ago and was "a complete farce"
with people simply removing the box undetected. In the US, where
electronic tagging is already in force, 'correction staff' only
discovered one woman under a curfew order was dead after two
weeks. In addition people with jobs could not be tagged during
working hours.
Court action supervised by Securicor means that for the first
time in the history of British criminal justice private security
companies are to be given powers to prosecute offenders as well
as organise and supervise their sentences.
The departure is now just part of the Government's plans for the
electronic tagging of offenders but it could soon be vastly
widened to cover a range of police roles. Group 4 has already
made representations to take over running what they term "police
custody suites" (in reality: police cells) although they are
understood not to be interested in street patrolling.
There is no accountable regulation of private security industry
which now has more personnel (167,000) operating in the UK than
police officers (127,328) and which includes firms who already
possess dire reputations.
Is this the end of the police as we know it? A review by chief
constables of police functions which could be taken over by
private security companies is in the pipe-line. Are some police
functions going to be privatised? Will the polis be up for
competitive tendering in the near future?
One thing is sure, rent-a-cops are still cops.
Also coming soon in Britain 1995 :
ID CARDS (Green Paper); NATIONAL DNA DATABASE (FORCED MOUTH
SWABS) (Section 59, CJA); ARBITRARY STOP & SEARCH ('SUS' LAWS)
(Section 60, CJA); CHILDREN'S PRISONS (Part I, CJA); BUILDING
PRISON SHIPS (Section 100, CJA); BLANKET SPY CAMERAS (incl.
Section 163, CJA); MORE FORCED MEDICATION FOR MENTALLY ILL
(Supervised Discharge Orders, Mental Health Act amendment);
ABOLITION OF RIGHT TO SILENCE (Section 34-38, CJA) .....