Pandora’s Box? Electronic Monitoring in England and Wales

• In Event: Electronic Monitoring in Europe

Abstract

England and Wales was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce electronic monitoring with pilots involving defendants on bail taking place in the late 1980s. Since then there has been a gradual expansion of the ways in which electronic monitoring (EM) has been utilized. It is currently used mainly to enforce curfews using radio-frequency technology at most of stages of the criminal justice process. Recently a significant expansion of EM has been announced which involves increasing the number of defendants/offenders who are electronically monitored and introducing GPS capability for all those who are monitored. Parallel developments are occurring in police forces which are increasingly using GPS in their ‘offender management’ work. This paper will suggest that these developments signal a step change in use of EM increasing its importance within criminal justice policy and moving it from a peripheral criminal justice measure to one which is central to the way in which defendants/offenders are managed in the community. It will highlight the controversies which surround EM focusing particularly on the involvement of the private sector. It will conclude by examining the legal and ethical challenges presented by the increasingly diverse uses of EM in England and Wales.

Author

• Anthea Hucklesby, University of Leeds UK