Lobby for police to be able to insist on high risk individuals being tagged
The PCC wishes to seek Government support for the extension of the use of electronic tags for managing high-risk individuals within the community, particularly those who are under suspicion or investigation but have not yet had formal charges brought against them.
The Commissioner has regularly raised the issue of pre-charge tagging for consideration.
In 2016 the then Lord Chancellor Michael Gove visited Dorset where the PCC lobbied for the mandatory tagging of individuals who have been released after serving jail sentences for committing sex offences against children.
In April 2017, the PCC offered his support to a Voluntary Offender Tagging scheme in operation locally for offenders on probation or released from prison.
He said: “If offenders are genuinely committed to changing, we should support their rehabilitation and encourage their reintegration into the community…
“Imposing a tag as a condition of bail is currently not permitted. The early evidence indicates that this is an area worthy of further consideration.”
Later in 2017, the PCC again set out his case for tagging high risk individuals in a Daily Echo article, drawing on his own policing experience as a senior investigator into the murder of Sarah Payne.
The PCC continues to believe passionately in this approach, which would build further on the 2019 Ministry of Justice rollout of GPS tagging to include the monitoring of suspects on bail. Such location monitoring can be used to:
- Enforce an exclusion zone – where an offender or individual on bail cannot enter a specific location or area.
- Keep an offender or individual on bail a given distance from a point or address, including a victim’s address or that of a known criminal associate.
- Monitor an offender’s attendance at a certain activity – for example work or a rehabilitation programme.
- Monitor an offender’s movements to support discussions with probation about an offender’s lifestyle and behaviours.