Electronic tagging

Electronic tagging is a form of surveillance which uses derived from the Greek word for “all-seeing”), the prison-
an electronic device (a tag) fitted to the person. It is com- ers are arranged in a ring of cells surrounding their guard,
monly used as a form of electronically monitored punish- who is concealed in a tower in the center. The idea is that
ment for people who have been sentenced to electronic the guard controls the prisoners through his presumed ob-
monitoring by a court, or required to wear a tag upon re- servation: they constantly imagine his eyes on them, even
lease from prison. However, electronic tagging and mon- when he’s looking elsewhere.[2]
itoring is also used in healthcare settings with people with
dementia and in immigration contexts in some jurisdic- "[T]he persons to be inspected should al-
tions. If the device is based on GPS technology, it is ways feel themselves as if under inspection
usually attached to a person by a probation officer, law ... for the greatest proportion of time pos-
enforcement or a private monitoring services company sible, each man should actually be under
field officer, and is capable of tracking the wearer’s loca- inspection.”[3]
tion wherever there is the satellite signal to do so. Elec-
tronic monitoring tags can be also used in combination Bentham promoted the concept of the Panopticon for
with curfews to confine defendants or offenders to their much the same reasons that spur criminal-justice inno-
homes as a condition of bail, as a stand-alone order or as
vation today—a ballooning prison population and the
a form of early release from prison. The combination ofneed for a cheap solution with light manpower demands.
electronic monitoring with a curfew usually relies on ra-
It is worth remembering that when the modern prison
dio frequency (RF) technology, which differs from GPS emerged, it, too, was promoted as a reform a positive
technology. replacement for corporal or capital punishment.[2] Early
prison reformers—many of them Quakers bent on repen-
tance and redemption—suggested that cutting people off
1 Background from the rest of the world would bring them closer to
God.[4] (The word “penitentiary” comes, of course, from
“penitence.”) Whereas the guard in Bentham’s day had
1.1 Conceptual history only two eyes, however, today’s watcher can be virtu-
ally all-seeing, thanks to GPS monitoring technology.[2]
The use of home detention as a means of confinement and The modern prisoner, in other words, need not wonder
control within the home can be traced back to biblical
whether he is being observed; he can be sure that he is,
times when the Romans placed Paul the Apostle, under and at all times.
[1]
house arrest.

1.2 Development
The technologies of electronic monitoring have their
roots in the work of Dr. Ralph Schwitzgebel of the
Science Committee on Psychological Experimentation at
Harvard University (1968). In 1964, Ralph Kirkland
Schwitzgebel (family name later shortened to “Gable”)
headed a research team that experimented with prototype
electronic monitoring devices. Schwitzgebel and William
S. Hurd were granted patent #3,478,344 and published an
article informing how such monitoring devices could be
used.[5]
He developed a one-kilogram Radio Telemetry Device
Panopticon: Presidio Modelo prison, inside one of the buildings,
2005 that could be worn by a person.[6] The device transmit-
ted signals to a modified missile-tracking unit up to 400
In the 18th century, the English philosopher and social metres away, which determined the wearer’s location on
theorist Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon, a hy- a screen.[7] The Harvard researchers invented and as-
pothetical prison.[2] Inside the Panopticon (the name is sessed a prototype monitoring system to use upon ju-

1
2 2 HOW IT WORKS

venile offenders.[8] The public responded unfavorably on to return home and remain there after a certain time of the
the whole, fearing that the devices were overly intrusive. evening. More recent technology such as GPS and cellu-
Twenty years later, in 1983, a New Mexico district court lar networks have permitted courts to order more specific
judge first sentenced offenders to electronic monitoring restrictions, such as permitting a registered child sex of-
by home. Even in 1966 it was noted that, in theory, the fender to leave his home at any time of day, but alerting
system could be modified to gather and transmit physio- authorities if they come within 100 metres of a school,
logical data such as pulse rates, blood alcohol levels, brain park, or playground.
waves, or information on other bodily functions of the
wearer and, conversely, that information or stimulation
could be sent back to the person wearing the transmit- 2 How it works
ting device. It could also be easily adapted to serve as a
listening device or two-way radio. The system was tested
on volunteers who included students, parolees and mental 2.1 Big picture
patients, and experiments along these lines exploring its
possibilities were conducted. Schwitzgebel was granted a 2.1.1 2-Dimension trilateration
patent in relation to the system in 1969.
Imagine someone somewhere in the United States and he
A diversion from its criminal justice application, in 1978, is completely lost track of where he last was. He then
a company called BI Incorporated began selling systems asks directions in a nearby town and a local tells that is
that allowed dairy farmers to dispense feed to their cows his 625 miles from Boise, Idaho. He could be anywhere
automatically. The company fitted a radio-frequency tag on a circle around Boise that has a radius of 625 miles.[10]
on each cow’s ear so that when the cow approached the
feed dispenser, a sensor in the latter caused it to drop a If this person then asks another person where he is and
ration of fodder. If the same cow returned, the sensor is told that he is 690 miles from Minneapolis, Minnesota,
recognized the unique signal of the tag and prevented the he could combine this information with the Boise infor-
cow from getting a second helping until after enough time mation, and he then has two circles that intersect. He
had passed for her to digest the first. then knows that he must be at one of the two intersection
points if you are 625 miles from Boise and 690 miles from
In 1981 writer Tom Stacey took to the British Home Of- Minneapolis.[10]
fice a proposal for the electronic tagging of offenders to
track their movements, or fix a home curfew, using cellu- If a third person tells him that he is 615 miles from
lar radio telephone technology. Stacey had been briefly Tucson, Arizona, this person could then eliminate the
imprisoned abroad in his former role as a foreign cor- other options, because the third circle will only inter-
respondent and had for several years served as a Prison sect with one of these points. This same concept works
Visitor in England. He followed his presentation to the in three-dimensional space, as well, where there is only
Home Office with a letter to The Times (published 6 spheres instead of circles.[10]
October 1982) outlining the proposal and his immedi-
ate formation of the Offender’s Tag Association, com-
2.1.2 3-Dimension trilateration
posed of electronic scientists, penologists and prominent
citizens. The term 'tagging' thus entered the vocabu-
lary in the penal context. In March 1983 the Offender’s
Tag Association held a national press conference. Later
that year, a district court judge, Jack Love, persuaded
Michael Goss, a computer salesperson, to develop a sys-
tem to monitor five offenders in Albuquerque, New Mex-
ico. Judge Love was supposedly inspired to act based
upon a storyline in a Spider-Man comic, specifically the
newspaper comic strip version where the Kingpin puts
an electronic bracelet on the superhero primarily to fol-
low his movements.[9] This was probably the first court-
sanctioned use of electronic monitoring.
Until the widespread adoption of cellular and broadband
Internet networks in the mid-1990s, electronic monitor-
ing devices were typically home-based, dependent on a
dedicated land line, and able to report only whether or Artist’s impression of a Navstar-2F satellite in orbit.
not the criminal being tracked, was remaining at home.
This was useful for criminals on work-release, parole, or Fundamentally, three-dimensional trilateration isn't
probation, for example DWI offenders who were allowed much different from two-dimensional trilateration, but
to leave home to go to work during daytime hours but had it’s a little trickier to visualize. Imagine the radii from the
2.2 Small picture 3

previous examples going off in all directions. So instead stored in the receiver’s memory, connect the receiver to a
of a series of circles, you get a series of spheres.[10] computer that can hold more detailed maps in its mem-
If someone knows he is 10 miles from satellite A in the ory, or simply buy a detailed map of your area and find
sky, he could be anywhere on the surface of a huge, imag- your way using the receiver’s latitude and longitude read-
inary sphere with a 10-mile radius. If he then also knows outs. A standard GPS receiver will not only place you
he is 15 miles from satellite B, he could overlap the first on a map at any particular location, but will also trace
sphere with another, larger sphere. If he then also knows your path across a map as you move. If you leave your
the distance to a third satellite, he could get a third sphere, receiver on, it can stay in constant communication [10]
with
[10] GPS satellites to see how your location is changing.
which intersects with this circle at two points.
The Earth itself can act as a fourth sphere—only one of
the two possible points will actually be on the surface of 2.2 Small picture
the planet, so you can eliminate the one in space. The
GPS receiver figures both of these things out by analyzing The portable device is operatively coupled to a monitor-
high-frequency, low-power radio signals from the GPS ing system through a wireless telephone network. The
satellites. portable device transmits periodically encrypted location
Radio waves are electromagnetic energy, which means information as well as status information across the wire-
they travel at the speed of light (about 186,000 miles per less network to the monitoring system. The monitoring
second, 300,000 km per second in a vacuum). The re- system tracks the location of the individual and alerts
ceiver can figure out how far the signal has traveled by the appropriate authorities when the individual violates
timing how long it took the signal to arrive.[10] a rule, such as a condition for parole. The portable de-
vice increases the time between transmissions when the
The correct time value will cause all of the signals that the
individual is within a specified home location and reduces
receiver is receiving to align at a single point in space. So
the time between transmissions when outside the speci-
the receiver sets its clock to that time value, and it then has
fied location.[10]
the same time value that all the atomic clocks in all of the
satellites have. When you measure the distance to four As a fail-safe against any technological glitch, whether
located satellites, you can draw four spheres that all inter-accidental or malicious, a leading Electronic Monitoring
sect at one point. Three spheres will intersect even if your operator is immensely proud of its backup systems, which
numbers are way off, but four spheres will not intersect boast an ultra-secure data room and extreme redundancy:
at one point if you've measured incorrectly. The receiver For example, if a toxic-gas cloud were to wipe out the
does this constantly whenever it’s on, which means it is town of Anderson, the last act of the staff there would be
nearly as accurate as the expensive atomic clocks in the to flip the switches diverting all call traffic to BI’s corpo-
satellites.[10] rate office in Boulder, Colorado, where a team capable
of taking over instantly in case of disaster is always on
In order for the distance information to be of any use, the
duty.[2]
receiver also has to know where the satellites actually are.
Things like the pull of the moon and the sun do change the
satellites’ orbits very slightly, but the Department of De-
fense constantly monitors their exact positions and trans- 3 Other designs
mits any adjustments to all GPS receivers as part of the
satellites’ signals.[10]
3.1 Medical and health use
For one thing, this method assumes the radio signals will
make their way through the atmosphere at a consistent The use of electronic monitoring in medical practice, es-
speed (the speed of light). Problems can also occur when pecially as it relates to the tagging of the elderly and peo-
radio signals bounce off large objects, such as skyscrap- ple with dementia, is capable of generating controversy,
ers, giving a receiver the impression that a satellite is far- and media attention.[11] Elderly people in care homes can
ther away than it actually is. The station then broadcasts be tagged with the same electronic monitors used to keep
a radio signal to all DGPS-equipped receivers in the area, track of young offenders. For persons suffering from de-
providing signal correction information for that area.[10] mentia, electronic monitoring might be beneficially used
The most essential function of a GPS receiver is to pick to prevent them from wandering away.[11] The contro-
up the transmissions of at least four satellites and combine versy in its medical use relates to two arguments, one as
the information in those transmissions with information to the safety of the patients, and the other, as to their pri-
in an electronic almanac, all in order to figure out the re- vacy and human rights.[12] At over 40%, there is a high
ceiver’s position on Earth.[10] prevalence of wandering amongst patients with dementia.
Of the several methods deployed to keep them from wan-
Once the receiver makes this calculation, it can tell you dering, it is reported that 44% of wanderers with demen-
the latitude, longitude and altitude (or some similar mea- tia have been kept behind closed doors at some point.[13]
surement) of its current position. You can use maps Other solutions have included constant surveillance, use
4 4 EFFECTIVENESS

of makeshift alarms and, the use of various drugs that 4 Effectiveness

carry the risk of adverse effects.[12]
Opinions as to the propriety of electronic tagging of the The use of ankle bracelets, or other electronic monitor-
elderly and persons with dementia vary. Carers welcome ing devices, effectively deters crime and, as such, benefits
the idea of electronic tracking devices so long as it allows society immensely
wanderers to be found more quickly.[14] Some persons ar- . This is especially possible where it is applied early,
gue that a little liberty can be sacrificed in order to achieve thereby making it possible to save otherwise habitual of-
safety and any concern about privacy only has force when fenders from a life of crime.[20] Several factors have been
we imagine that the person involved is trying to hide.[15] identified as necessary to render electronic monitoring ef-
The thinking behind this argument is that, for wandering fective. These include: appropriately selecting offenders,
persons with severe dementia, being electronically tagged robust and appropriate technology, fitting tags promptly,
and monitored carries less stigma than being found half responding to breaches promptly, and communication be-
dressed, in the middle of the night, on a highway.[12] On tween the criminal justice system and contractors.[21] The
the other side of the argument, it is contended that even Quaker Council for European Affairs thinks that for elec-
in mild dementia, the need to protect a patient’s right to tronic monitoring to be effective, it should serve to halt a
privacy must be maintained. Even though electronic tag- developing criminal career.
ging and monitoring increases liberty, in a sense, it may
potentially decrease the autonomy of the patient. Track- The National Audit Office in England and Wales com-
ing may only settle the anxiety of Carers and family with- missioned a survey to examine the experiences of elec-
out necessarily attending to the needs of the person with tronically monitored offenders and the members of their
dementia. What is important is to determine if persons family. The survey revealed that there was common
with dementia have the capacity to make decisions, and agreement amongst survey respondents that electronic
if they do, their decisions should be respected. Where monitoring was a more effective punitive measure than
the person lacks the capacity, decisions need to be made fines, and that it was generally more effective than com-
in their best interest. Best interest in this sense does not munity service.[22] An interviewed offender is credited
simply mean the person’s best medical interest. Deciding with saying: ‘You learn more about other crimes [in
on their best interest will require careful inquiry, negoti- prison] and I think it gives you a taste to do other crimes
ation, and judgment.[12] because you've sat listening to other people'.

4.1 Padgett, Bales and Blomberg study

3.2 Commercial use
In 2006, Kathy Padgett, William Bales and Thomas
On an iPhone, “Location Services” allows location-based Bloomberg conducted a well–controlled, large scale eval-
apps and websites (including Maps, Camera, Safari, and uation of 75,661 Florida offenders placed on home de-
other Apple and third-party apps) to use information from tention from 1998 to 2002.[20] As a condition of their
Global Positioning System (GPS) networks to determine home sentence detention, a small percentage of offend-
your approximate location.[16] ers were made to wear an electronic monitoring device.
This allowed a comparison study between the offenders
who were electronically monitored and those who were
3.3 Parental use not. Padgett et al. controlled for various factors, includ-
ing: the type of placement, type of electronic monitoring
A company in Japan has created GPS enabled uniforms device (GPS or radio frequency), criminal history, of-
and backpacks.[17] School children in distress would be fender characteristics, type of primary offence commit-
able to hit a button, immediately summoning a secu- ted by each offender, court- ordered conditions of super-
rity agent to their location. Other similar applications vision, the number of weeks absconded, weeks in treat-
in the U.S. have included mobile phones enabled with ment etc. A total of 62 variables were incorporated in
GPS tracking, to allow parents to track their school each individual model to control for the factors influenc-
children.[18] ing the success or failure of community supervision.[23]
The researchers incorporated time-varying independent
variables in the estimation of maximum-likelihood co-
3.4 Vehicular use efficients, and also applied proportional-hazards survival
analysis to adjust for right-censoring.[23] Comparable this
Public transit vehicles are outfitted with electronic moni- to other studies, Stuart Yeh states that no previous study
toring devices that talk to GPS systems tracking their lo- of electronic monitoring controlled such an array of vari-
cations. App developers have integrated this technology ables nor involved such a large sample.[20]
with mobile-phone apps. Now, passengers are able to re- By investigating the rate of compliance, Padgett et al.
ceive accurate public transit timetables.[19] found that violent offenders monitored by GPS were
 5

91.2% less likely to abscond than those offenders not the technology enables Net-widening, where non-prison
monitored at all. This indicates a significantly high rate bound individuals are subject to increased monitoring.
of compliance with parole terms by monitored offend- Electronic monitoring does not physically restrain a per-
ers. Electronic monitoring also effectively prevented of- son and dangerous offenders are still able to offend before
fenders from committing new offences while being mon- authorities can intervene. Home detention with electronic
itored. By and large, monitored offenders were 94.7% monitoring is perceived by some people as lenient.[7]
less likely to commit new offences than unmonitored of-
fenders. The researchers found ‘no clear evidence that, As early as 1988, the Penal Affairs Committee of the Re-
overall, the decision to monitor offenders on home con- ligious Society of Friends (Quakers), wrote a briefing in
finement with enhanced electronic control mechanisms its Green Paper strongly opposing the adoption of elec-
results in ‘front-end' net-widening. In other words, of- tronic monitoring in England and Wales.[29] The Com-
fenders sentenced to home confinement with EM seem mittee noted all the claims made in favour of electronic
to have posed a significantly higher risk to public safety monitoring but insisted that all such claims could be ‘ei-
and would have had a higher likelihood of receiving a ther demolished or rendered invalid' by arguments against
prison sentence if not for the availability of EM as an en- it. The major argument or criticism against it was that on
hanced control mechanism.' In the end, GPS monitored the basis of past experience, electronic monitoring would
offenders are 90.2% less likely than offenders on home not absolutely be used on people at risk of custody, but on
confinement without EM to be revoked for a technical people who would otherwise have been granted probation
violation.[23] or community service. This would lead to a widening of
the net of control rather than reducing prison population;
Another major advantage is the fact that wide deployment it would undermine constructive and supportive interven-
of electronic monitoring may lead to reduced prison pop- tions. The Penal Committee concluded that the degrading
ulations. This is most likely where monitoring is used monitoring of fellow human beings, electronically, was
as an alternative to prison, rather than to enhance ex- morally wrong and unacceptable.[30] They argued that the
isting non-custodial orders. Major cost savings may be system was inherently ‘retributive and punitive' and the
achieved through building fewer prisons as well as reduc- wearing of an ankle monitor would be stigmatizing for
ing the cost of administering custodial sentences. women offenders.[31]
Another is the possibility of improving rehabilitation and In the US in 1990, Ronald Corbett and Gary T. Marx
reintegration of offenders. Electronic monitoring may al-
criticised the use of electronic monitoring in a paper pre-
low more offenders to maintain employment and contact sented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society
with their families. It also avoids any negative psycholog- of Criminology, Baltimore. In the paper, which was
ical effects of incarceration, although of course the wear- later published in the Justice Quarterly, the authors de-
ing of a device carries its own psychological pressures. scribed ‘the new surveillance' technology as sharing some
ethos and the information-gathering techniques found in
maximum-security prisons thereby allowing them to dif-
4.2 Jamming fuse into the broader society. They remarked that ‘we ap-
pear to be moving toward, rather than away from, becom-
Some truck companies use fleet management software in- ing a “maximum-security society."'[32] The authors ac-
tegrated with GPS in vehicles to monitor whether their knowledged the data-mining capacity of electronic mon-
drivers ever break speed limits, and in response, some itoring devices when they stated that ‘data in many dif-
delivery drivers buy illegal GPS jammers to subvert the ferent forms, from widely separated geographical areas,
system.[24][25][26] organizations, and time periods, can easily be merged and
In late 2009 satellite-positioning receivers for a new nav- analyzed.'[32]
igation system at Newark airport in New Jersey were suf- In 2013, it was reported that many electronic-
fering brief daily breaks in reception.[27][28] Somethingmonitoring programs throughout the US were not
was interfering with the signals from orbiting global posi-
staffed appropriately.[33] George Drake, a consultant who
tioning system (GPS) satellites. A driver who passed by worked on improving the systems said ‘Many times when
on the nearby New Jersey Turnpike each day used a cheap an agency is budgeted for electronic-monitoring equip-
GPS jammer in his truck. Jammers prevent tracking de- ment, it is only budgeted for the devices themselves.'
vices from determining (and then reporting) its location.He added that the situation was ‘like buying a hammer
and expecting a house to be built. It’s simply a tool, and
it requires a professional to use that tool and run the
program.' Drake warned that programs can get out of
5 Criticisms control if officials don't develop stringent protocols for
how to respond to alerts and don't manage how alerts
A number of criticisms of the technology exist - some are generated: ‘I see agencies with so many alerts that
"Tough on Crime" groups argue that electronic tag- they can't deal with them,' Drake said. ‘They end up
ging perceived as lenient, while other groups argue that
6 8 JURISDICTIONS

just throwing their hands up and saying they can't keep American justice in the world was finally arrested in
up with them.' In Colorado, a review of alert and event Switzerland. The terms of his release included $4.5m
data, obtained from the Colorado Department of Cor- bail, house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet at his chalet,
rections under an open-records request, was conducted known as Milky Way, in the Swiss ski resort of Gstaad,
by matching the names of parolees who appeared in after having spent sixty-seven days in a Zurich detention
that data with those who appeared in jail arrest records. centre.[37]
The data revealed that 212 parole officers were saddled Bernard Madoff the financier accused in a $50 billion
with the duty of responding to nearly 90,000 alerts and fraud case before trial was ordered under house arrest,
notification generated by electronic monitoring devices
with electronic monitoring, and posting $10 million bail
in the six months reviewed.[33] against his $7 million Manhattan apartment, and against
According to an analysis in the Journal of Law and Pol- his wife’s homes in Montauk, N.Y., and Palm Beach,
icy, most of those placed on electronic monitors haven't Fla.[38]
committed serious or violent offenses and, were it not for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former International Monetary
monitoring, “at least some of these populations would not Fund chief, charged with trying to rape a hotel maid May
in fact be incarcerated or otherwise under physical con- 14, 2011. On release from jail, arranged for house ar-
trol.” Eighty-nine percent of probation officers surveyed rest, with a private security company that kept him under
by the Justice Department felt that “offenders’ relation- armed guard and electronic monitoring as conditions of
ships with their significant others changed because of be- his bail. Prosecutors estimated the cost at $200,000 a
ing monitored.” Both officers and those monitored ob- month, which he was responsible for paying.[2]
served that the ankle band had a distinct impact on chil-
dren. As one parent testified, “When it beeps, the kids Dr. Dre In 1992, the rapper was arrested for assaulting
worry about whether the probation officer is coming to record producer Damon Thomas and later plead guilty to
take me to jail. The kids run for it when it beeps.” assault on a police officer, eventually serving house arrest
and wearing a police-monitoring ankle bracelet.[39]

6 Movies, literature and the arts

As a condition for her bail, Gabrielle Baillieux, the pro-
tagonist in Peter Carey’s Amnesia, had to wear an ankle
monitor. Later a colleague soldered it off. The device 8 Jurisdictions
was transferred to a dog, whose movements were instead
tracked.[34]
In The Good Wife, (“Bang”) season 1 episode 15, Peter 8.1 USA
had been imprisoned for several months after being con-
victed of charges of corruption. He is allowed to return
home under house arrest while his appeal is considered. The U.S. correctional system is overwhelmed by the over-
Peter must wear an ankle monitor and cannot leave the incarceration of nonviolent offenders such as drug users.
apartment or communicate with the outside world.[35] Private-prison corporations themselves have begun to ex-
pand into the “alternatives” industry. The GEO Group
In the 2007 American mystery horror-thriller movie,
now has an array of “community reëntry services” and
Disturbia, a 17-year-old high school student, Kale Brecht
treatment programs.[40] In 2011, it acquired the coun-
(Shia LaBeouf), is charged with aggravated assault after
try’s largest electronic-monitoring firm, BI Incorporated,
his teacher made a personal remark about his dad, who
for $415 million.[40] For the most part, these companies
had died in a car accident, and Kale is sentenced to three
deal not with felony probationers (“probation” as it is usu-
months’ house arrest. He is secured with an ankle moni-
ally understood) but with people whose offenses are of-
tor and allowed only 100 feet from his house.
ten too minor to merit jail time. The system is known as
“offender-funded” justice.[40]

7 Notable instances Jack Long, a Georgia attorney, filed a habeas petition on

behalf of a client who, after stealing a two-dollar can of
beer from a convenience store, was ordered to spend a
Lindsay Lohan failed to appear at a mandatory hearing, year wearing an ankle bracelet operated by a company
and a warrant was issued for her arrest. The judge or- called Sentinel Offender Services.[40] The man wound
dered Lohan to wear a SCRAM bracelet, an electronic up owing more than a thousand dollars to the company
device that monitors the bloodstream for alcohol and in fees and late-payment penalties, and started selling
drugs and alerts authorities if prohibited substances are his blood plasma to keep pace. Dozens of probationers
consumed.[36] are jailed because of electronic-monitoring bills, most of
Roman Polanski one of the most famous fugitives from which were not authorized by any legal statute.[40]
8.3 Australia 7

8.2 United Kingdom Electronic tagging has begun being used on psychiatric
patients, prompting concern from mental health advo-
Electronic monitoring of a curfew has become an integral cates who state that the practice is demeaning.[46]
part of the criminal justice system in the United King-
dom, used at various stages of criminal cases used to
monitor compliance with a curfew, requiring the curfe- 8.3 Australia
wee to remain in their home for a specified number of
hours a day or exclusion from specified areas (such as vic- 8.3.1 Pre-trial
tim’s homes and football grounds).
In Western Australia, The Bail Act 1982 (WA) specif-
Those subject to electronic monitoring may be given ically provides for electronic monitoring at the pre-trial
curfews as part of Bail conditions, sentenced under the stage. The Act allows only judicial officers to impose a
Criminal Justice Act 2003 in England and Wales (with home detention. This is done after first obtaining a suit-
separate legislation applying in Scotland). Alternatively ability report, from a corrections officer, on accused per-
offenders may be released from a prison on a Home De- sons aged over 17. The accused person may then be re-
tention Curfew. Released prisoners under home deten- quired to wear a device or permit the installation of a de-
tion allowed out during curfew hours only for: vice in the place where he/she is required to remain.
In most Australian jurisdictions, the generally broad dis-
1. A wedding or funeral (service only) of a close rela- cretion available when imposing bail conditions may per-
tive mit electronic monitoring.[47] For instance, in section
11(2) of the South Australian Bail Act 1985, the bail au-
2. A job interview thority may 'impose a condition requiring an accused per-
son to remain at his or her residence except for authorised
3. Acting as a witness in court activities such as employment.'[7] The Supreme Court of
South Australia, it is thought,[7] may have interpreted this
4. Emergencies.[41] as authority to order electronically monitored bail, at least
where the applicant is willing.[48]
Additionally, electronic monitoring may be used for those
subject to a curfew given under the Terrorism Prevention
8.3.2 Primary sentencing
and Investigation Measures Act 2011 (previously known
as Control order under the Prevention of Terrorism Act The Northern Territory and Western Australia have laws
2005[42] ) that specifically authorize electronic monitoring as a pri-
Since electronically monitored curfews were rolled out mary sentencing option for home detention. The Sentenc-
throughout England and Wales their use has increased ing Act 1995, of the Northern Territory, provides that a
sharply, from 9,000 cases in 1999-00 to 53,000 in 2004- 'court which sentences an offender to a term of impris-
05. In 2004-05, the Home Office spent £102.3 mil- onment may make an order suspending the sentence on
lion on the electronic monitoring of curfews and elec- the offender entering into a home detention order'. Such
tronically monitored curfews are considered cheaper than offenders may be required to 'wear or have attached an
custody.[43] Ninety days in custody (e.g., a prison) costs approved monitoring device in accordance with the di-
approximately five times more than the same amount of rections of the Commissioner, and allow the placing, or
time on an electronically monitored curfew order. installation in, and retrieval from, the premises or place
Typically, offenders are fitted with an electronic tag specified in the order of such machine, equipment or de-
vice necessary for the efficient operation of the monitor-
around their ankle which sends a regular signal to a re- [49]
ceiver unit installed in their home. Some systems are con- ing device'.
nected to a fixed telephone line in the case where a GSM In Western Australia, the Sentencing Act 1995 provides
signal is not available, whilst most arrangements utilise that a court may impose an intensive supervision order
the mobile phone system to communicate with the mon- with a curfew requirement. The offender is required to
itoring company. If the tag is not functioning or within submit to surveillance or monitoring as ordered;[50] wear
range of the base station during curfew hours, or if the a device or have a device installed in his or her home.[51]
base is disconnected from the power supply, or the base Electronic monitoring 'may only be imposed for a term
station is moved then the monitoring company are alerted, of six months or less’.
who in turn, notify the appropriate authority such as the In New South Wales, although the law does not specif-
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom, National Pro- ically authorise electronic monitoring, the Crimes (Sen-
bation Service or Prison.[44] tencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW), however, grants the
The monitoring of sex offenders via electronic tagging is court the power to 'impose such conditions as it considers
currently in debate due to certain rights offenders have in appropriate on any home detention order made by it'.[52]
England and Wales.[45] In practice, electronic monitoring is used to enforce these
8 10 NOTES

home detention orders.[53] The general powers of court [6] Black & Smith (2003), p. 254
may also allow electronic monitoring in other States and
Territories.[7] [7] Black & Smith (2003)

[8] Robert S. Gable, Left to Their Own Devices: Should

Manufacturers of Offender Monitoring Equipment be Li-
8.4 Brazil
able for Design Deject?, 2009 U. ILL. J.L. TECH. &
POLY 333, 335
In August 2010 Brazil awarded a GPS Offender Monitor-
ing contract to kick start its monitoring of offenders and [9] QI Transcript, Season 4 Episode 8 QI, Transcript on qi-
management of the Brazilian governments early release transcripts.com; Broadcast 2006; Accessed 25 September
programme[54] 2007

[10] Brian, Marshall; Harris, Tom. “How GPS Receivers

8.5 South Africa Work”. How Stuff Works.

Electronic monitoring as a pilot project was started in [11] “Electronic tagging for Alzheimer’s”. BBC News. 27
September 2002.
March 2012, involving 150 offenders, mostly prisoners
serving life terms. The project was rolled out to reduce [12] Julian C Hughes and Stephen J Louw, ‘Electronic Tagging
the South Africa’s prison population. It consequently of People with Dementia who Wander: Ethical Consider-
would also reduce the taxpayer’s burden on correctional ations are Possibly more Important than Practical Bene-
facilities.[55] South Africa locks up more people than any fits’ (2002) 325(7369) British Medical Journal 847—848
other country on the continent.[55] <PubMed>

[13] McShane R et al, ‘Getting Lost in Dementia: A Longitu-

dinal Study of a Behavioral Symptom' (1998) 5 Interna-
9 See also tional Psychogeriatrics 239—245

• Ankle monitor [14] McShane R et al, ‘The Feasibility of Electronic Tracking

Devices in Dementia: A Telephone Survey and Case Se-
• Automatic vehicle location ries’ (1998) 13 International Journal of Geriatric Psychi-
atry 556—563.
• Local Positioning Systems
[15] McShane R, Hope T and Wilkinson J, ‘Tracking Patients
• Global Positioning System Who Wander: Ethics and Technology' (1994) 343 Lancet
1274.
• GPS tracking
[16] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202588
• RFID
[17] Katz, Leslie. “GPS-enabled school uniforms hit Japan”.
• Supranet Retrieved April 2005. Check date values in: |access-date=
(help)

10 Notes [18] Griffiths, Sarah. “No more lost children!". Retrieved 31

May 2015.
[1] Gibbs, Anita; King, Denise (2003). “The electronic ball [19] Shakibaei, Bambui. “Real time GPS locations on trans-
and chain? The operation and impact of home detention port apps”. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
with electronic monitoring in New Zealand”. Australian
& New Zealand Journal of Criminology. 36 (1): 1–17. [20] Stuart S Yeh, ‘Cost-benefit analysis of reducing crime
doi:10.1375/acri.36.1.1. through electronic monitoring of parolees and probation-
ers’ (2010) 38 Journal of Criminal Justice 1090—1096.
[2] Wood (2010)
<http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/YEH_2010.pdf>
[3] Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings 41 (Miran Bo-
zovic ed., 1995) (1995). [21] Quaker Council for European Affairs, ‘Inves-
tigating Alternatives to Imprisonment' (2010)
[4] Schenwar, Maya. “The Quiet Horrors of House Arrest, <http://www.qcea.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/
Electronic Monitoring, and Other Alternative Forms of rprt-alternatives-en-jan-2010.pdf>.
Incarceration”. Mother Jones. Retrieved 22 January
2015. [22] National Audit Office, ‘The Electronic Monitoring of
Adult Offenders: Report by the Comptroller and Au-
[5] Gable, Ralph K.; Gable, Robert S. (June 2005). “Elec- ditor General', (1 February 2006) Appendix 4 [on-
tronic Monitoring: Positive Intervention Strategies”. Fed- line], accessed 30 May 2015, <http://www.nao.org.uk/
eral Probation. publications/nao_reports/05-06/0506800.pdf>.
10.1 References 9

[23] Kathy Padgett, William Bales and Thomas Blomberg, [43] http://www.nao.org.uk/report/
‘Under Surveillance: An Empirical Test of the Effective- the-electronic-monitoring-of-adult-offenders/
ness and Consequences of Electronic Monitoring' (2006)
5(1) Criminology and Public Policy 61–91 <http://www. [44] http://www.le.ac.uk/oerresources/criminology/msc/
antoniocasella.eu/nume/Padgett_electronic_2006.pdf>. unit8/page_21.htm

[24] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10228874/ [45] Electronic tagging of offenders raises rights concerns, The
Guardian, 12 August 2010
GPS-jammer-costs-driver-32000-after-interfering-with-plane-signals.
html
[46] GPS tracking mental health patients - human rights con-
[25] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/ cerns, BMH UK, 22 June 2010
taxi-driver-fined-over-use-of-illegal-gps-jammer-in-fare-scam/
[47] Nacro Youth Crime 2002, “Electronic monitoring of chil-
story-fni0fee2-1226799269681
dren remanded on bail or to local authority accommoda-
[26] http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/ tion”, Youth Crime Briefing, June
illegal-mobile-phone-and-gps-jammer-crackdown-by-regulator-yields-results-20130716-2q2oo.
[48] R v Blayney [2002] SASC 184.
html
[49] Section 44 (3) (b), Sentencing Act 1995 (NT).
[27] http://www.cnet.com/au/news/
truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-accidentally-jams-newark-airport/
[50] Section 75 (1) (b) Sentencing Act 1995 (WA)
[28] Economist, The. “No Jam Tomorrow”. Retrieved 10 [51] Section 75 (10) (a) & (b) Sentencing Act 1995 (WA)
March 2011.
[52] Section 82 (1), Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999
[29] Penal Affairs Committee (1988), pp. 13–19 (NSW)
[30] Penal Affairs Committee (1988), p. 19 [53] Keay, N. 2000, “Home detention: An alternative to
prison?" Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 12, no.
[31] Mike Nellis, ‘Quakers, Penal Reform and the Challenge
1, pp. 98-105.
of Electronically Monitoring Offenders’ (2011) 25 (1–2)
International Review of Law, Computers & Technology [54] SecureAlert Signs First-Ever GPS Offender Monitoring
95—105. Contract in Brazil, TMCnet, 23 August 2010
[32] Ronald Corbett and Gary T. Marx, ‘Critique: No Soul [55] Dept. of Correctional services: Rep of South Africa,
In The New Machine: Technofallacies In The Electronic South Africa’s first ever Electronic of a Remand Detainee,
Monitoring Movement' (1991) 8 (3) Justice Quarterly 15/04/2014.
[33] Christopher N Osher, ‘Electronic Monitor-
ing of Colorado Parolees has Pitfalls’, The
Denver Post (Online), 6 September 2013
10.1 References
<http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_23420684/
electronic-monitoring-colorado-parolees-has-pitfalls>. • Black, Matt; Smith, Russell G. (2003). “Electronic
monitoring in the criminal justice system”. Trends
[34] Carey, Peter (2015). Amnesia. Random House Canada. and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice (PDF). 254.
p. 52. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. pp.
241–260. ISBN 0-642-53801-8.
[35] Bang (The Good Wife)
• Penal Affairs Committee (1988). “Electronic tag-
[36] Molly Carney, Correction through Omniscience: Elec-
tronic Monitoring and the Escalation of Crime Control, ging: a briefing paper”. Quaker Social Responsibility
40 Wash. U. J. L. & Pol'y 279 (2012) and Education Journal. X (3): 13–19.

[37] Toobin, Jeffrey. “The Celebrity Defense”. The New

Yorker. Retrieved 14 Dec 2014.
11 External links
[38] Lapidos, Juliet. “How do you qualify for house arrest?".
Retrieved Jan 2009. Check date values in: |access-date= • Brazil awards the first GPS Monitoring of offenders
(help) contract to support early release programme
[39] http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/dr-dre/ • BBC Article on tracking violent offenders due for
biography
release 18 August 2010
[40] Stillman, Sarah. “Get Out of Jail Inc.”. Retrieved Jun
• Electronic Monitoring and Tracking using Local Po-
2014. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
sitioning Systems
[41] Home Detention Curfew
• Monitoring for abusive offenders and alcohol/drug
[42] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24803069 abusers Ankle Bracelets – Ignition Interlock
10 11 EXTERNAL LINKS

• Tag 'too bulky' for bail woman at BBC News, 10

November 2005
• National Probation Service official website

• The Denver Post

• National Audit Office

• AntonioCasella Stuart S Yeh

• Quaker Council for European Affairs

• National Center for Biotechnology Information

 11

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