Nottinghamshire Police is one of the pilot forces for the government-funded Electronic Monitoring Acquisitive Crime Project. This involves the compulsory tagging and monitoring of serious acquisitive crime offenders – including burglars, robbers and thieves – who fit certain eligibility criteria. Within this Ministry of Justice-led scheme, neighbourhood crime offenders who receive more than three months in prison are forced to wear a Global Positioning System (GPS) tag on release and managed within the force’s Integrated Offender Management programme. There are currently around 80 offenders in Nottinghamshire wearing these types of tags under the pilot. Of those who have received tags since January – 72 per cent involved in this scheme haven’t reoffended. Crime mapping data is sent every 24 hours to the Ministry of Justice, who compare the GPS tracking data of the offenders to the actual crimes. Time and location ‘proximity hits’ are then sent back to Nottinghamshire Police which is able to follow up on the information. A 23-year-old burglar from Nottingham was the first in Nottinghamshire to be convicted and sentenced thanks to GPS tag data since the rollout of the Acquisitive Crime Project. Data from his GPS tag identified Darron Childs as being at the location of an attempted burglary in Hyson Green. He was promptly arrested, charged and following a guilty verdict was sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment when he appeared at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on 16 November 2022. Inspector Paul Harris is Nottinghamshire Police’s tactical lead for Integrated Offender Management and electronic tagging and monitoring. He said: “As a force we are at the forefront of electronic monitoring. The introduction of this Ministry of Justice-led tagging scheme has been a real step up in terms of offender management, reducing acquisitive crime offences such as burglary, robbery and theft and giving us clear opportunities to quickly catch those who do reoffend. “We treat all reports of burglary, robbery and theft extremely seriously but we want to prevent these types of intrusive and impactful crimes from happening in the first place. “By enabling us to keep close tabs on offenders this great new scheme is helping us make our streets safer and crack down on those individuals causing misery in our communities.” Insp Harris added: “While we are a pilot force for this successful project, it’s a real systemic approach and team effort in Nottinghamshire to manage offenders. “Offenders on this project are all managed through the Nottinghamshire Integrated Offender Management team. Every hit that comes in is triaged by the Force Intelligence Bureau, with information passed onto colleagues in our Criminal Investigation Department who are able to make arrests. “We have long employed various types of electronic monitoring of offenders to reduce reoffending and risk. These include voluntary GPS tagging schemes in Nottinghamshire, as well as a voluntary sobriety tagging project to help rehabilitate people who have committed alcohol-driven crimes.”
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