Electronic monitoring legislation reflections

Currently, the Electronic Monitoring Bill (No. 240) is being debated and analysed in parliament. It is hoped that a proper analysis is undertaken by the respective parliamentary committee and that, eventually, any enactment done is periodically monitored and reviewed too.

Although studies in many countries have found that electronic monitoring is a promising tool for reducing recidivism and controlling corrections costs, questions remain about its effectiveness as an alternative to incarceration.

In this sense, it is imperative that one has a broad view of the uses, advantages and disadvantages of electronic monitoring technologies, as well as possible directions for future research, such as electronic tags being expanded to allow the courts to order their use in cases concerning bail.

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The traditional concern with electronic monitoring, which remains valid today, is whether we will be using technology just because we have it. So we have to be thoughtful about its application. Estonia, for example, despite its effective integration of electronic monitoring within probation, has not managed to persuade its judges to use monitored sentences as a strategic means of reducing the use of short periods of custody.

Eventually, there will necessarily have to come into play the ethical challenges of the introduction of electronic monitoring. There are, in fact, two distinct areas of ethical deliberation relevant to a debate about electronic monitoring: the ethics of punishment, control, and care and the ethics of technological change.

Electronic monitoring is a “techno correctional innovation” that calls for more modern understandings of the acceptability or otherwise of using digital technologies in particular spheres of social life. These latter understandings may be more subliminal or unconscious because, in their everyday lives, professionals are now immersed in a world of technological gadgetry, our smartphones, laptops and tablets most obviously.

This may be less true of poorer offenders. Both these factors make it doubly important that we think more carefully about the ways in which digital technology is being deployed in our societies and the ethics of its use.

Commercial organisations will inevitably be involved in the provision of electronic monitoring, if only as providers of technology (hardware and software) and technical support.

Will they also be providing monitoring staff and run monitoring centres? And will service delivery itself be left in the hands of any tender-winning commercial provider?

In many respects, the technology has moved faster than the policy and practice.

At the end of the day, there might be lurking a real danger of over-reliance on the technology before all the kinks are worked out and policies are fully thought out about how to respond to all of this stuff. But a pilot project is worth launching.

Mark Said – Msida

A paradise for tourists

Recently, this newspaper interviewed a good number of foreign tourists who were returning to their own country after having spent a holiday on our island. Not even one of those interviewed had expressed a generally negative opinion about our country with just a couple who mentioned a few things we have to see to, such as “bumpy roads” and the amount of construction going on.

All of those interviewed expressed very positive views about Malta and Gozo, from “delightful experience” to “an island paradise”, with the highest praise being given to the Maltese and Gozitan people for the effusive welcome they found wherever they visited.

All said that they would recommend our country to their relatives and friends and many promised to return.

How different from what we often read in certain opinion pieces, penned by Maltese and a few British opinionists and commenters who may have an obvious political agenda and who depict our country as just being a “construction site” not worth visiting.

Eddy Privitera – Naxxar

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