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Policing - in brief (11)

01 January 1997

Netherlands: Tagging experiment: An experiment with electronic house arrest has been so successful that the justice department now intends to introduce this new method nationwide. Between July 1995 and July 1996, some fifty convicted people were issued an electronic ankle bracelet which is remotely monitored to ensure that they attend an obligatory daytime work programme and stay indoors in their own home for the rest of the day. The period of electronic "hard time" lasted between one and six months. Only two cases had to be terminated prematurely.

Netherlands: The "divisie Centrale Recherche Informatie" (CRI), the national criminal intelligence service, will soon be reorganized under a new name. Also the building in Zoetermeer (near The Hague) that the 650 CRI staffers moved into only three years ago will be abandoned for a new complex in the centre of the country. This announcement has forced dozens of CRI officers to quit their jobs over the last few weeks. Morale at the CRI is at an all-time low over the last two years following the strong condemnation of the service's products by the Van Traa parliamentary investigation commission. Senior police management seem to have decided on a radical break with the past by bringing all the central investigative police services (such as the tactical investigations team, the Landelijk Recherche Team, the Criminal Intelligence Service, the covert surveillance and infiltration teams) under one Investigations Division. This in spite of repeated warnings by politicians for the danger of breeding a Dutch FBI.

Italy: left-leaning magistrates spied on: files on the activities of 323 leftist magistrates were uncovered in the Italian Interior Ministry last October. Investigators have now opened an inquiry into the gathering of the files from the early 1960s until 1980. They include files on the current speaker in the parliament and a leading anti-corruption magistrate. International Herald Tribune, 12.2.97.