2 Living on a tag
6. Electronic monitoring provides an opportunity
for offenders to turn their lives around in a controlled way and
change their offending behaviour by allowing them to access work,
education, family life and society outside prison within a structured
day. Alternatively, it gives them the opportunity to breach their
curfew conditions and even re-offend whilst on a tag.[9]
7. There was anecdotal evidence from offenders that
being on a curfew was more helpful than prison in changing the
behaviour of offenders. There was no evidence, however, that the
Curfew Order itself reduced the incidence of re-offending. It
was likely to be the access that offenders on curfew had to training,
employment, housing and family life that helped them to reconnect
with society and reduce their offending rather than the Curfew
Order itself. The Home Office recognised that further research
was required to establish the role that electronic monitoring
could play in minimising re-offending.[10]
8. Providing a curfew address for an offender can
be difficult for others living at the address. It is often a major
upheaval for families to have an offender confined to their home
for 12 hours each night. The experience of living with a curfewee
has caused some families to withdraw consent for their address
to be used as a curfew address (19% of the cases examined by the
National Audit Office). Offenders then become ineligible for curfew
if an alternative address can not be found. When Probation Officers
carried out the home assessments they gave families of offenders
limited advice on the issues surrounding living with a curfewee.
This advice was patchy. Visits could be used to explain the requirements
of providing a curfew address in greater depth so that families
could give fully informed consent. Better information has been
provided by Gwent Probation Area since they started using a standardised
checklist for home visits. Advice and support for families when
they needed it to deal with specific situations is restricted
to that which can be offered by the contractors' service centre
staff. Group 4 Securicor provided training for its staff to deal
with these calls and its staff could refer calls to the local
Samaritans.[11]
9. Offenders themselves need to be fully informed
about the requirements of curfews and their specific curfew conditions
if they are to adjust to life on a tag. Home Office research showed
that half of prisoners released on Home Detention Curfew felt
ill-informed about their curfews before leaving prison and these
offenders were more likely to think that they had breached their
curfew conditions than those who felt well informed (Figure 3) .[12]
Figure 3: Half of curfewees felt poorly informed about the curfew process
prior to release on Home Detention Curfew and they were more likely
to think that they had violated their curfew conditions
Source: Survey of curfewees conducted by the Home
Office
10. Many prisoners undertook education and training
while in prison to help with rehabilitation. When they were released
on Home Detention Curfew, however, they were unable to continue
with that education or training. All prisoners are given an assessment
at the point of leaving prison and an interview at a job centre
with the intention that they would go into education, training
or employment at that stage. This has been achieved for almost
40% of prisoners. It was not, however, linked to the training
that prisoners were undertaking at prison. The National Offender
Management Service was created to bring about the seamless management
of offenders; that any needs identified early in a prisoner's
sentence are followed up regardless of whether the offender is
in prison or released.[13]
11. Less help has been provided to offenders given
Adult Curfew Orders. Unless the courts specified any rehabilitative
remedy in conjunction with the curfew, the only help available
for them to access education and training or to find work was
the same as that offered to offenders in general. In the future
the Home Office would like to see greater use made of curfew orders
in conjunction with other measures as part of rehabilitation.[14]
9 Qq 31, 89-91 Back
10
Q 31 Back
11
Qq 28-29; C&AG's Report, para 3.12 and Figure 17 Back
12
K Dodgson, P Goodwin, P Howard, S Llewellyn-Thomas, E Mortimer,
N Russell and M Weiner, Electronic Monitoring of released prisoners:
an evaluation of the Home Detention Curfew Scheme, Home Office
Research Study 222 Back
13
Q 21 Back
14
Q 30 Back
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