Tagging Offenders

The Ministry of Unfitness for Purpose is investigating some dire claims by the BBC about the practices of Group 4 Securicor Justice Services Limited, which is responsible for monitoring nearly seventy per cent of electronically tagged offenders in England and Wales. The BBC's Inside Out team recorded staff members displaying their pride in their work ("You think this company is doing good? It's crap. I tell you what, I wish the papers would get to know about it because it would shut them down within months."), their zeal for efficiency ("Myself and a colleague would sit there thinking, 'God, this just isn't right. We're taking off so many hours, surely we shouldn't be doing this.'") and a commitment to public service worthy of the denizens of a Calcutta call centre ("We don't know, we cannot retrieve the information ... They could have been in Barbados for a week while it is on 'missing' status; we wouldn't know"). A spokesbeing for Group 4 Securicor Justice Services Limited was on hand to deliver the usual recorded address about taking it all very seriously and an improvement programme being put in place; more interestingly, the chief executive of Nacro said that the findings were "alarming for those of us who believe that electronic tagging can play a useful role in offenders' rehabilitation." As far as I can see, the findings say nothing at all about the role of electronic tagging in rehabilitating offenders, any more than the recent BAE corruption scandal says anything about powered flight. There might just possibly be something to learn about the role of private profit in assuming or debasing the responsibilities of the state; but it is unlikely that the Ministry of Unfitness for Purpose will be amenable to learning anything of the sort. Indeed, it seems likely that the Ministry sees the BBC's claims as little more than a good excuse for putting yet more people in prison; otherwise it would be investigating the BBC rather than Group 4 Securicor Justice Services Limited.