Compliance with location monitoring (GPS) conditions in the criminal justice process

Electronic monitoring (EM) has been a feature of criminal justice in England and Wales since the 1990s, but location monitoring, using Global Positioning Schemes (GPS), has only recently been introduced. It is available for use pre-trial, as a sentence and as part of early release arrangements. Its introduction represents a significant addition to the tools available to criminal justice agencies to monitor individuals' whereabouts and/or their compliance with a range of conditions whilst in the community. It signals a step change in the capacity of criminal justice agencies to track the movements of large numbers of individuals remotely, allowing compliance with conditions to be more closely monitored with less reliance on scarce human resources. Location monitoring has the potential to significantly increase the reach of criminal justice agencies resulting in considerable ethical and human rights concerns.
The project is a collaboration with Electronic Monitoring (EM) Directorate at Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) responsible for overseeing the implementation of location monitoring (LM) and Electronic Monitoring Services (EMS), the private contractor who operates EM. It will be first empirical study of compliance with non-custodial options using location monitoring (GPS) technologies in the criminal justice system. It seeks to understand whether, and in what ways, location monitoring increases compliance with non-custodial measures in the criminal justice system. It will adopt a mixed methods approach utilising documentary, administrative and interview data. The project will utilise, and add empirical understanding to, the conceptual and theoretical debates on compliance within criminal justice as well as to broader debates on compliance and regulation. The project will also engage with the interdisciplinary literature on technological enabled compliance and surveillance studies. The project findings are expected to influence EM policy and practice by enhancing the current level of knowledge for the partners and wider EM community.
The project involves spending time on a regular basis with the project partners in London and Manchester, including two weeks during the first six months of the project. The project will also involve both overnight stays and unsocial hours as most activity relating to EM takes place in the evenings.