Tags to keep track of parolees
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Johannesburg - Imagine this: a paroled offender leaves home when he’s not supposed to and heads off to a prohibited spot, but the authorities know within 30 seconds because he’s tagged and tracked.
It’s not a movie, it’s the plan of the Department of Correctional Services that will start tracking the first 500 parolees early next year.
The department is looking for a turnkey solution that tags offenders, tracks them and immediately alerts a 24/7/365 control centre of transgressions.
A Correctional Services document, which outlines the technology needed, says: “These services must provide the capacity to monitor an offender’s and awaiting-trial person’s compliance/non-compliance to programme-specific parameters such as exclusion and inclusion zones, curfews and time schedules with the goal of reducing the likelihood of future criminal activity.”
Correctional Services deals with 47 000 remand detainees and 115 000 sentenced inmates, and supervises 66 000 people awaiting trial.
Monitoring officials spend about 60 percent of their time travelling, so the department wants a more efficient way of monitoring parolees and out-of-jail people awaiting trial. Chronic prison overcrowding adds to the need for a tagging programme.
The intention is to get thousands of people onto an electronic monitoring programme over five years, starting on January 31. The cost is not indicated, but is expected to be cheaper than keeping people in jail.
“It is envisaged that a cumulative of 500, 1 000, 2 000, 5 000 and 10 000 offenders and awaiting-trial persons will be tagged a year during the five-year contract period,” says the document. This would include parolees, probationers, offenders with a fine, remand detainees with and without bail, awaiting-trial people under supervision, and day parolees.
The devices must be tamper-proof, waterproof to depth, be able to monitor drug or alcohol use, send alarms if the offender tries to remove or block them, keep a signal in built-up areas, and record the offender’s proximity to within metres.
The devices must report the position of high-risk offenders at least every 30 seconds.
An alarm must sound if the offender moves out of a defined zone or into an exclusion zone.
They must be able to notify victims of the proximity of the offender, for example in cases of domestic violence.
About 150 offenders have been on a test programme.
About 10 percent repeatedly tried to remove the tagging device, while others ran into the unexpected problem of being mugged – muggers mistook the devices for advanced cellphones.
louise.flanagan@inl.co.za
The Star