The Ministry of Justice has announced plans to pilot the UK’s first ‘proximity tagging scheme’ to keep offenders away from victims.

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The idea is that the victims of say sexual assault or domestic abuse will have a GPS locator in their phone, which pings if an offender on early release from prison and tagged in the community comes within a pre-set distance of them. A police or probation officer can then intervene accordingly.

This is part of the big expansion of tagging proposed by the Government given the pressure on prison places. It is being marketed as a scheme to ensure dangerous offenders are ‘under constant scrutiny’ and watched ‘more closely than ever before’ to better protect victims and the public.

There’s nothing wrong in my mind with the principle of using technology to deter offending - an area where policing has long........

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