The pros and potential pitfalls of 'tagging' criminals

Their movements can be tracked and the device won’t be removed until the courts decide the time is right. And if they try to get rid of the chip? Well it will be on a part of the torso difficult to reach — think deep tissue — and it will not be clear which side of the body the device has been fitted.

Ridiculous stuff of science fiction? Well the technology to do this may not be quite there yet but jump ahead a decade or so and the picture could look very different.

Electronic tagging of criminals has already been around for over two decades and in the UK around 70,000 devices a year are fitted on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. And now Bermuda is introducing a pilot scheme — a partnership between the Bermuda Security Group and the government — allowing the electronic monitoring of offenders on bail.

According to reports, this scheme will see around 20-25 ‘medium to low risk’ criminals fitted with ankle tags allowing authorities to track their movements using internet, cellular and GPS technology.

The technology is set up to have ‘inclusion zones’ where the tagged person is allowed to be (for example their home) and ‘exclusion zones’ — for example, the house of a crime victim or the airport.

If a person goes anywhere they are not supposed to be, or if a device is tampered with or batteries run down, an alert will be sent out and appropriate action taken. 

As with all electronic systems, the monitoring has to be right in order to avoid the well-publicised gaffs that have occurred in other jurisdictions.

Electronic tagging has been operating in Grand Cayman since 2007 and once an individual there receives the ankle bracelet, they are kept on a list by the 911 service. The list is monitored from the emergency facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Yet in July 2010 a communication blip meant that the Cayman 911 emergency team was not notified about a man who had managed to remove his electronic tag and allegedly broke into a George Town home. The 29-year-old man then ended up being shot to death inside the home.

Shooting

In this case the 911 staff were only alerted about the incident by a 2am call from the homeowner after the shooting had taken place. His abandoned electronic tag was found at another location.

In the UK, there was a recent case that made headlines around the world and raised a few laughs. The private security firm, G4S, which is responsible for fitting electronic ankle tags, managed to put one on an offender’s false leg. This meant that 29-year-old Christopher Lowcock was able to break his court imposed curfew simply by leaving his dummy leg at home. Apparently Lowcock had fooled staff by wrapping a bandage around the false leg and staff from G4S fitted the tagging device to the bandaged limb. Red faces and apologies all round.

Occasional gaffs aside though, electronic tagging does have real benefits. Crime victims can be better protected and criminals out on bail reintegrated back into the community in a controlled way. Overall, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and it’s worth noting that officials from the British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos and Anguilla have recently visited the Cayman Islands to see how they administer electronic monitoring. Doubtless they’ll be learning from what has gone wrong there as well as the successes.

With electronic monitoring now being used outside the criminal justice system by parents wanting to keep an eye on their kids, care homes to increase the safety of dementia patients and wildlife experts using it to track animal movements, there is no doubt that tagging is here for the long haul.

So everyone will be watching the Bermuda pilot scheme with interest as it’s no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ the scheme will be rolled out for the duration.

Maggie Fogarty is a Royal Television Society award winning TV producer and journalist currently living in Bermuda.