Home      Login

Abstract: 

European systems tend to score higher on many indexes of fairness and efficacy, and that U.S. academic papers frequently cite lower incarceration and violent crime rates as evidence that European approaches are more enlightened. When it comes to offender monitoring, however, Rory Geoghegan believes that England and Wales have a great deal still to learn from the decentralized decision-making that characterizes the procurement and use of EM in the United States. This article examines, in detail, the U.K. U.K. Ministry of Justice centrally procured and managed contract for offender tagging, the cost overruns, mismanagement, and fraud uncovered by government auditors, and the failure of the Home Office to recognize the deficiencies of their centralized approach in letting a new contract in 2015 that has many of the same weaknesses the 2012 version had. In analyzing the state of EM in England and Wales, Rory Geoghegan also interviewed police and probation officers on their attitudes about EM, and presents the results of his research here.

Keywords: U.K. Ministry of Justice tagging contract; centralized procurement

Affiliations:  1: London Metropolitan Police.