Report EM 2005 - E - CEP, the European Organisation for Probation

Peggy Conway, Editor of the Journal of Offender Monitoring
Peggy Conway said that the term “electronic monitoring” nowadays referred to an ever
widening variety of technologies. She identified some new and still small-scale
technological developments in the USA, which might one day have implications for
Europe. Ignition interlock systems, for use with drink drivers, might be one of the more
innocuous ones. The technology for drive-by EM (using hand held devices pointed at
offenders’ homes, which then pick up a signal – or not – from the tag) was not new, but
recently there had been some instances of probation officers using it to monitor whether
offenders were drinking in bars. A somewhat different technology – placing special
monitoring devices in bars and pawn shops (where stolen goods sometimes get taken)
which then registered when a tagged offender entered that shop – served a similar
purpose, and blurred the distinction between house arrest and tracking. The fitting of
such monitoring devices to ATMs (automated cash dispensers) had also been considered
as a means of location monitoring outside the home. The merits of these permutations of
EM should perhaps be considered. Rather more alarmingly, some EM vendors had
suggested that young people be given alarm tags which sounded off if a tagged sex
offender went near them. Ms Conway was not commending these developments en
masse, but they gave some indication of what might be coming to Europe at some point
in the future. She implied that EM in the USA was perhaps too vendor-led, and echoed
Professor Renzema’s demands that the process of expansion should be slowed down and
researched properly before new steps were taken. She was impressed that the
development of EM in Europe took research more seriously.
Ms. Ravinder Rai, a probation officer working on one of the satellite tracking pilots in
England
For Ravinder Rai, the most important question about the use of EM was the purpose it
served in relation to each particular supervised offender. How did EM help – if it helped
at all – to further the aims of supervision Was the particular type of control that EM
offered actually needed Would it be counterproductive Experience had taught her that
it a was valuable tool in a significant number of cases, but that it should not be used in a
blanket fashion. She decried a tendency to think of EM as an end in itself, and to expect
too much of it. She had learned from this conference about the nature of other European
schemes and saw definite advantages to the Belgian model, not least because of the
more arms-length relationship it had with the private sector. In England, she anticipated
a significant expansion in the use of EM in the future.
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