Tags keep tab as curfew trials grow

ELECTRONIC tagging appears finally to have come good, two years
after controversial early trials in England descended into
farce.

The Scottish Office home affairs minister, Henry McLeish,
announced yesterday that Scotland will set up its own tagging
pilot, with a view to cutting the criminal justice bill and
easing prison overcrowding.

Tagging was intended as a community alternative to prison. Mr
McLeish has also suggested that tags could be used to shorten
prison sentences, so that criminals can be released a month
early to reintegrate into society while still submitting to the
discipline of a tagenforced home curfew.

And the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, said yesterday that the
English pilots would be doubled in size.

The enthusiasm for tags, following a glowing interim report of
the trials in Norfolk, Reading and Manchester, is a far cry
from the summer of 1995 when, after months of delays and
technical hitches, Clive Barratt, 29, a Norfolk shoplifter,
volunteered to be the first person in Britain to be tagged.

"When anyone ever asks me what the worst thing that ever
happened to me was, I say Clive Barratt," said Charles Rose,
the chief executive of the small tagging firm, Geografix, which
runs the Norfolk pilot.

"I believe he was paid UKP150 for an interview with GMTV about
what tagging was like, and I think he thought of the tag as a
novel way of earning money."

The tags are wristwatch sized electronic transmitters that
relay their whereabouts to a receiver connected to the home
telephone line. But Barratt did not have a telephone, opening
the prospect of Geografix monitors having to visit his house to
check he was in.

The Home Office relented and installed a phone line, but the
problems did not stop there. "He broke his curfew 46 times in
the first four weeks," said Mr Rose. "But he proved my
equipment worked and we had monitored him very well."

Barratt was returned to court and jailed. Geografix boasts that
he is one of only nine whose order had to be revoked out of 134
people tagged in Norfolk a 93 per cent success rate
compared to the UK rate of 80 per cent among 500 cases.

"Then we had a young woman who was sent direct from Holloway
prison to start her tagging, without being assessed or her home
address being checked.

"The poor girl was a junkie. When she got home she found the
electricity had been cut off, the house was completely bleak.
It was just destined to fail."

Other, darker, stories tell of a man who committed a murder
while wearing a tag. Some people simply refuse to obey the
curfew, but Mr Rose says they are few.

Success depends on how well the system is explained to the
offender, and the level of monitoring and family support that
backs it up, he claims.

"In the first four weeks there is a lot of testing out, as the
tagee finds out whether the equipment works and what happens
if they break the curfew," said Mr Rose.

"They learn that we mean business and this is not a soft
option. They have to plan to be home. If they run out of milk
it's no good ringing to ask if they can run down to the shops
the answer is no.

"After four weeks of managing to be at home from 6pm to 6am, a
person tends to have an investment in the whole process, they
don't want to trash it after all that."

Curfew orders vary so that, for example, junkies can pick up
their methadone and attend a clinic, but are at home when they
would normally be consorting with their junkie friends.

There is no data yet on whether tagging reduces reoffending.
One man has been tagged three times, but for offences committed
before the first tagging order.

"A few offenders have admitted grudgingly that it has been good
for them to spend more time at home and they have got a better
handle on life.

"I wouldn't say it was a universal panacea, but it deserves a
chance."

The early tagging orders cost UKP27,000 each, the same as a
year in prison. But with costs down to UKP100 a week, tags may
be here to stay.