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UK: Playing tag

01 July 1995

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The Home Office is insisting on going ahead with further tagging trials despite persistent equipment failures and strong criticism from probation officers and others. Trials were due to start in early July, on offenders of 16 and over in Manchester and Norfolk, after delays when electronic warnings failed to sound as Home Office officials left their "curfew" zones and went to pubs, shopping centres and on walks. Securicor Custodial said they knew what the problem was and it was solvable. The first tagging trials in 1989 ended in disaster when most of the tagged defendants absconded or committed further offences. Tags have not been an unqualified success in the US, where they originate, either, as a fact-finding survey carried out for the Association of Chief Probation Officers showed. Schemes in the US were closing as tags had been found to be "largely ineffective, very expensive, and did not deal with high-risk offenders". Independent 2 & 13 & 29.6.95; 3.7.95.

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