73 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
73 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
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) .....
|
|
|