LONDON (AFP) - Britain launched a pilot project using satellites to track child sex offenders and other criminals, triggering alarms if they near schools or other places barred to them.
AFP/ESA/File Photo
In the "prison without bars" project, some 120 offenders in Manchester and several other cities will wear tags allowing the police to monitor their Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite locations.
The offenders to be tagged in the 12-month project include paedophiles, spouse beaters and juvenile delinquants who will be monitored following their release from jail or as part of a community sentence, officials said.
Home Secretary David Blunkett, due in Manchester for a demonstration of the system, said it is the first such project in Europe, though tracking technology is already used for offenders in parts of the United States.
Blunkett, who previously announced it under a five-year crackdown on crime, said it would help ensure offenders were "sticking to the conditions of their licence and staying away from crime."
Officials said the system will sound an alarm if, for example, a tagged paedophile enters areas from which he or she has been banned, such as a playground or school, alerting police to their location.
"This technology will allow us to develop and promote the tough community sentences which are vital if we are to prevent re-offending and give non-violent offenders a chance to serve an effective sentence in the community," Blunkett said.
"The public have to be confident that this 'prison without bars' works and that it gives the police and probation services the tools they need to protect them," he added
The project covers not only the greater Manchester area, but also Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Portsmouth and Southampton, as well as the West Midlands communities of Sandwell and Dudley.
He added he hoped "other areas can benefit from this new technology as soon as possible," but did not elaborate.
Blunkett plans to double the use of electronic tagging overall, so that 18,000 people are tagged at any one time.
Assistant general secretary of the probation workers' union NAPO, Harry Fletcher, said that because the system was expensive it "must be limited to those offenders that pose the highest risk of harm to the public.
The government has set aside three million pounds for the project.
"Satellite tracking is another form of control which by itself will not prevent crime," he added. "It's also critical that it's not used as a substitute for treatment, supervision and surveillance."
Two types of satellite tracking will be tested in the pilot.
Passive tracking allows an offender to be monitored retrospectively with location data being downloaded at certain times during the day.
Hybrid tracking monitors offenders in "real time" if they enter an exclusion area, with their location appearing on an ordinance survey map to within six and a half feet (two metres), enabling appropriate action to be taken.
It is one of a package of measures which aims to meet a new government pledge to cut offending by 15 percent by April 2008.
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