PLAYING TAG: Pilot scheme is to start shortly
About 20 low-risk offenders are to take part in a pilot electronic tagging scheme this autumn. “The participants will be carefully selected having regard to the nature of the offence, public safety and overall conduct in prison and will be granted temporary release,” said Dermot Ahern, the minister for justice. Ahern, held talks last week with his counterparts in Britain, where tagging has been widespread since 1999. He has also discussed its merits with David Ford, the justice minister in Northern Ireland. The Prison Service asked companies to tender to provide GPS systems to monitor the movement of released prisoners. It is expected that the pilot programme will run until the end of the year and a decision will then be taken on introducing it widely.
PRESSURE POINT: Overcrowding has reached critical levels
Among those expected to be included is Geoffrey Evans, a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment in 1978 and who has been in a coma for 18 months. At the moment, six prison guards are keeping a bedside vigil, at an estimated cost to the state of up to €1.5m so far. Meanwhile, pressure on the state’s prisons grows apace, with the population topping 5,000 for the first time. Mountjoy, left, is holding 25% more prisoners than has been deemed safe — about 670 inmates instead of the recommended maximum of 540. More gardai with extra legal powers bringing an increased number of prosecutions before judges under political and media pressure to be tough is a recipe for the prison population growing even further.
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GLOBAL MONITORING: Results abroad have been mixed
Electronic monitoring has been extensively used in America and elsewhere. In Sweden, tags enforce curfews on convicted drink-drivers. It’s cheaper than locking someone up, but it is more expensive to electronically tag a released prisoner than to have him supervised by the Probation Service. Private security companies who administer tagging schemes have sometimes been accused of not following up on violations. Meanwhile, a study in Britain by Grant Shapps, an MP, found that when electronic tagging was introduced in 1999, just 1 in 40 individuals committed a crime while wearing a tag. But by 2006, it was one in nine. He believes the rise in reoffending may be as some prisoners are released too early, to alleviate overcrowding.
A SPECIAL CASE: Electronic tagging for sex offenders
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Legislation passed in 2006 allows for electronic monitoring of prisoners on temporary release, but Ahern would have to bring forward a new bill to allow post-release monitoring of sex offenders. While this has been talked about for well over a year, there seems to be no immediate government plans, despite regular concerns being expressed that the republic is something of a safe haven for released sex offenders. The justice minister has suggested that if such tagging is introduced, it will be for sex offenders thought to be at high risk of reoffending. Most convicted sex offenders do not offend again and have a much lower rate of recidivism than other types of criminal.