The Irish Jail Service has deserted the usage of digital tagging for offenders 12 years after it was first launched, citing considerations about worth for cash.
Nevertheless, the Authorities is pushing forward with separate plans to introduce tags to observe intercourse offenders who’ve accomplished sentences and are again residing in the neighborhood.
Jail officers determined to cancel the programme, which concerned the tagging of prisoners on short-term launch, following session with the Division of Justice. In addition to tagging prisoners on long-term short-term launch, it was additionally used for inmates launched for hospital visits, which negated the necessity for a jail escort.
A spokesman stated the service didn’t have any plans to make use of digital monitoring sooner or later.
The service has spent greater than €727,000 tagging prisoners since 2018 and had a contract with a personal safety firm that allowed it to tag as much as 50 prisoners at a time. It’s understood that, on common, solely about 20 tags have been used at any given level.
“Following a evaluation in 2020, the Irish Jail Service, in session with the Division of Justice, determined to not renew the contract in January 2021 for value-for-money causes,” the service stated.
The cancellation of the programme means there may be presently no company utilising digital monitoring of offenders in Eire. Laws was handed in 2006 permitting judges to order the tagging of suspected offenders whereas awaiting trial in an effort to scale back jail overcrowding. Nevertheless, the system was by no means dropped at bear.
Intercourse offender
The Cupboard final month authorized the Intercourse Offenders (Modification) Invoice 2021, which can permit gardaí to use for digital monitoring of a intercourse offender to assist guarantee compliance with a post-release supervision order.
This might embody guaranteeing that the offender stays away from colleges or areas the place their victims reside. The newest statistics present there are 1,708 intercourse offenders topic to some type of monitoring.
The usage of digital tagging has a combined historical past in Eire. A pilot programme for 31 prisoners, which passed off in 2010, was beset with technical points. A lot of the tools malfunctioned and a few offenders needed to preserve the gadgets of their pockets after the straps broke. Two feminine offenders needed to minimize the gadgets off after their legs swelled up.
A evaluation of the pilot programme advisable the continued use of tagging however solely on a small scale. The venture lay largely dormant till 2017, by which period know-how had improved and it was reactivated by the jail service.
Vivian Guerin, a former head of the Probation Service, stated digital tagging had its function however solely when utilized in a focused method.
“The query is, is it including any worth in any respect?” he requested. “In some instances it may be used indiscriminately the place I don’t assume it provides any worth.”
Mr Guerin stated there have been additionally typically “false expectations” about what tagging was able to. “You typically hear, ‘Tag the whole thing of them’,” he stated.
“But it surely received’t cease somebody committing a criminal offense. So I’m favour of its use however as an adjunct to probation supervision or early launch circumstances.”