Public Safety committee  Yes, the Home Office's own research, the government's own research, was peer reviewed by the internal mechanisms the Home Office uses. It's not the same as an academic peer review system, but it would be fair to say that it was high-quality government research. My sense of its limitations is that it focused only on the pilot.

Public Safety committee  I actually don't know the answer to that question specifically, because the cost of it has varied over the years depending on the particular financial arrangements that the British government has contracted with the private companies, so there isn't an easy figure to put on that, and I certainly don't know what the figures are for Sweden.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  To keep it simple and focused, yes, these people might otherwise have been in prison for longer than they actually were in prison, given that GPS is available to supervise them when they come out. If these people were not subjected to GPS, they might well be in prison for a longer period of time.

Public Safety committee  I firmly believe that. I firmly believe that the Swedish way and the German way of using electronic monitoring in the context of existing probation facilities is the best way to use electronic monitoring. I think a small element of surveillance in the context of a larger rehabilitative program is a perfectly sensible way to go about managing often quite difficult people.

Public Safety committee  No, I'm afraid I don't know. I don't think it is widely used in Europe, and if it were, I think I would know about it. The networks of people I know who use electronic monitoring don't talk much about immigration uses and uses with asylum seekers. It's much more extensive in the United States of America, but I freely admit that I don't know very much detail about its use in the United States of America.

Public Safety committee  It is normally worn on the ankle because it was found that some people can manipulate their thumbs sufficiently to slip it off their wrist. If the tag is used on women offenders when they're pregnant and their ankles are prone to swelling up, there is a wrist version of it. The electronic tags used in Britain can be cut through with a pair of strong scissors.

Public Safety committee  In countries that have used them a lot and where there has been reasonable media coverage, it is quite likely they would know what they were. There are always some people who don't know, and if they draw attention to what's on their ankle, people have sometimes said it's a medical device and their doctor has them wearing it.

Public Safety committee  No, I think that England and Wales is a good crucible for all the different uses of it. I think that we have used it across the board on the criminal justice system, meaning that we've used it on a very wide range of offenders, from people who have committed assaults and burglaries right through to people on parole who have committed murder and serious sex offences.

Public Safety committee  Let's take the intensive supervision and surveillance package that has been available for a decade now for young offenders. The surveillance and support is taken fairly literally, because the support consists of educational programs, or work training, and offender management program that address the young person's anger, their impulsivity, their attitudes towards victims, and their attitudes towards offending generally.

Public Safety committee  The technology is radio frequency technology. The offender wears a tag on his ankle, which sends out a signal to a transceiver installed in his home. The transceiver picks up a signal from the tag on the ankle and sends it to a monitoring centre, either by a telephone land line or by the cellphone system.

Public Safety committee  That is correct. RF technology merely pinpoints you in your own home. GPS technology can monitor you wherever you go.

Public Safety committee  That was a minor part of it. In fact, the cost is not as great as people think. The American figure that's usually given is $5 a day for RF technology and $15 a day for GPS technology. Don't take those figures too seriously, but hold in mind that it's three times more expensive.

Public Safety committee  In England and Wales it is installed by the private sector, the private organization that is contracted to deliver the service to the government. Each day the court sends a fax to the private company to say who an electronic monitoring order has been made on, and the monitoring officer--or in some cases officers, because sometimes they go in twos—goes to the person's house to fit the tag by the end of that day.

Public Safety committee  It's about as big as a big wristwatch. They tend to be grey plastic. I wish I had brought one with me. They're not particularly obtrusive any more. Your analogy of the wristwatch is quite accurate. The monitoring technology can be packaged into something quite small now, but the strap is an important piece of the technology because it's usually got an optical fibre in it.