News

What future for electronic monitoring?

Last week we held a symposium on the future of electronic monitoring of those under a criminal justice sanction in England and Wales.

The symposium heard from Dr Hannah Graham, from the University of Stirling and Professor Mike Nellis, from the University of Strathclyde.

Dr Graham spoke about the Scottish experience of electronic monitoring, as well as international evidence on impact and effectiveness. Professor Nellis...

25 January 2018
Publication

Grayling's failings on electronic monitoring

Drawing on the recent forensic analysis by the National Audit Office, Professor Nellis, one of the foremost experts on electronic monitoring, highlights the ‘massive waste of public money’ and the ‘hubris and incompetence’ that has dogged the programme.

28 July 2017
News

Call for parliament to investigate tagging fiasco

The Ministry of Justice should consult widely and transparently with public sector, private sector and civil society organisations on plans to electronically monitor those under a criminal sanction, if it is to avoid the waste and chaos that characterised attempts to develop a new satellite-enabled GPS tag.

Parliament should also investigate the 'vast waste of time, energy and money' expended by the Ministry of Justice as its unrealistic programme lurched from one crisis to another.

The call comes in a new Centre for Crime and Justice Studies briefing by Professor Mike Nellis, one of the...

28 July 2017
News

Scrap 'vanity project' tagging scheme call

Our Director, Richard Garside, today called on the Ministry of Justice to scrap its 'vanity project' GPS tagging programme, and focus its energies on more pressing problems, such as the prisons and probation crises.

His call came in response to a...

12 July 2017
Comment

Michael Gove and the future of electronic monitoring

The hubristically named 'New World' electronic montoring (EM) strategy, devised by the Conservative-led Coalition Government back in 2012, was a commercial, technological and penal fiasco and there is nothing to be regretted about its passing.

11 March 2016
News

Satellite tagging plans throwing good money after bad

The Centre's director, Richard Garside, said today that the Ministry of Justice should halt plans to commission off-the-shelve satellite tagging technology.

His comments follow yesterday's announcement that the Ministry was...

26 February 2016
News

Electronic monitoring - a flawed alternative

A report published by the US-based, Centre for Media Justice, has highlighted concerns about the rush to deploy electronic monitoring (EM) equipment as an alternative to imprisonment.

The report, ...

21 October 2015
Publication

The global trade in (techno) corrections

Electronic monitoring (EM) and offender technologies have developed as responses to the problem of prison overcrowding and the focus on introducing market values to the criminal justice sector, incorporating advances in information and communication technological infrastructures into new modes of...
By 
Craig Paterson
cjm 95: Electronic monitoring
Publication

The grey area of electronic monitoring in the USA

My interest in doing research on electronic monitoring started with a phone call. At 2 o'clock one morning in early 2010 my then 96-year-old mother phoned to say she was having chest pains, thought it was a heart attack and had already called emergency services. The ambulance was on the way. The...
By 
James Kilgore
cjm 95: Electronic monitoring
Publication

Abolishing electronic monitoring in Australia

Who says that punitive forms of electronic monitoring (EM) are expanding everywhere? The EM-home detention programme in Victoria was abolished in 2011 by the conservative coalition parties, which formed the state government in late 2010. Programme closure was a part of coalition parties’ wider...
By 
Marietta Martinovic
cjm 95: Electronic monitoring