Just like a ball and chain...
  
Introducing the electronic ball & chain... A little black box 
attached to the ankle or wrist marks the start of new curfew laws 
in Britain.  Home Secretary Michael Howard has announced trials 
of electronic tagging of 'offenders' which he believes will 
eventually become the principal community sentence with up to 
20,000 orders imposed a year. People will be confined to their 
homes for between two and 12 hours a day for up to six months. If 
they move out of the range of a designated telephone the black 
box will transmit a signal down to a central monitoring centre. 

Securicor have 'won' the z1.4 million contract for the trials in 
Manchester, Reading and Norfolk to begin in June of this year. 
They will be required to consider all violations of a curfew 
order and take appropriate action. Serious violations would 
include "being absent from home for more than 24 hours without a 
reasonable excuse" which would trigger immediate court action - 
supervised by Securicor. Other violations include "interference 
to the monitoring system caused by the actions of others such as 
pets, children or other householders. Examples could be the 
disconnection of the power supply or telephone link; the phone 
repeatedly left off the hook or repeated minor tamperings". 

Not only do Securicor have no experience of dealing with 
offenders, they face huge practical problems. For a kick off, 
"suppliers" must first attempt to install a telephone if one is 
not already available but their staff have no legal right of 
entry to the offender's home and can only visit with consent. 
Secondly the tags have got to be difficult to remove - it was 
tried in Nottingham four years ago and was "a complete farce" 
with people simply removing the box undetected. In the US, where 
electronic tagging is already in force, 'correction staff' only 
discovered one woman under a curfew order was dead after two 
weeks. In addition people with jobs could not be tagged during 
working hours.

Court action supervised by Securicor means that for the first 
time in the history of British criminal justice private security 
companies are to be given powers to prosecute offenders as well 
as organise and supervise their sentences. 

The departure is now just part of the Government's plans for the 
electronic tagging of offenders but it could soon be vastly 
widened to cover a range of police roles. Group 4 has already 
made representations to take over running what they term "police 
custody suites" (in reality: police cells) although they are 
understood not to be interested in street patrolling.

There is no accountable regulation of private security industry 
which now has more personnel (167,000) operating in the UK than 
police officers (127,328) and which includes firms who already 
possess dire reputations. 

Is this the end of the police as we know it? A review by chief 
constables of police functions which could be taken over by 
private security companies is in the pipe-line. Are some police 
functions going to be privatised? Will the polis be up for 
competitive tendering in the near future? 

One thing is sure, rent-a-cops are still cops.

Also coming soon in Britain 1995 : 

ID CARDS (Green Paper); NATIONAL DNA DATABASE (FORCED MOUTH 
SWABS) (Section 59, CJA); ARBITRARY STOP & SEARCH ('SUS' LAWS) 
(Section 60, CJA); CHILDREN'S PRISONS (Part I, CJA); BUILDING 
PRISON SHIPS (Section 100, CJA); BLANKET SPY CAMERAS (incl. 
Section 163, CJA); MORE FORCED MEDICATION FOR MENTALLY ILL 
(Supervised Discharge Orders, Mental Health Act amendment); 
ABOLITION OF RIGHT TO SILENCE (Section 34-38, CJA) ..... 

