Arthur Morgan
Question:79 Deputy Arthur Morgan asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the cost of the proposed pilot scheme to electronically tag a number of offenders; if the decision to pursue the use of electronic tags while simultaneously reducing the number of probation officers was based on new evidence in view of the fact that existing evidence from an evaluation of their use in England found that it cost twice as much to electronically tag an offender as to supervise them by a member of the Probation Service; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that private security companies that administer the electronic tagging scheme do not routinely follow up violations by individual offenders; if his further attention has been drawn to the fact that the authorities there pay private tagging companies approximately three times the actual cost of each offender monitored and electronic monitoring does not reduce re-offending. [19658/10]
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