Prague, Aug 5 (CTK) – The Czech Probation and Mediation Service has put up a tender for 250 electronic monitoring bracelets and other 500 are to be bought in the following two years, Justice Ministry spokeswoman Tereza Schejbalova has told CTK.
However, the ministry has refused to release the costs.
Daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes today that the final price of the project might amount to 800 million crowns, while 250 million would be the minimal price.
The ministry says the first ankle bracelets could be put into operation at the beginning of next year.
The contract includes not only supplies of electronic monitoring devices and a monitoring centre, but also training of the staff to operate the centre and technical service. The centre should be able to communicate with up to 10,000 bracelets.
In the first phase, the ankle monitors should be used to check people sentenced to house arrest.
In the future, they might be also applied instead of custody. Deputies are now assessing such a proposal.
Electronic monitoring should help the Prison Service solve the problems with overcrowded prisons in a long term.
LN writes that at present only 2 percent of convicts or some 200 are serving an alternative sentence of house arrest. They are being checked by the Probation and Mediation Service’s clerks.
However, the number of people under house arrest should considerably rise thanks to electronic monitoring, LN writes.
In addition, the Justice Ministry would like to introduce electronic monitoring for a short-term protection of crime victims and witnesses, LN says.
However, it adds, the system can also be used for perpetrators of domestic violence expelled from their homes and people banned from entering sport events, primarily football rowdies, and to monitor prisoners working outside prisons and escorted convicts, LN writes.
A study conducted by the KPMG agency considers it optimal if the ministry operated 2020 monitoring bracelets.
The KPMG has analysed possible risks of electronic monitoring. Apart from technological and security shortcomings, it is mainly the risk of not being used sufficiently, in other words that judges will not be willing to impose alternative sentences, LN writes.
The KPMG also points out the risk of a too high final price.
LN recalls that the previous tender for such devices was cancelled on suspicion of overpricing by then justice minister Jiri Pospisil in 2012 since the initial price of 600 million rose to over two billion,.
If the current tender runs smoothly, a supplier of the electronic monitoring system should be chosen in the autumn and the first ankle bracelets could be put into operation at the beginning of next year, LN say.
It writes that the same electronic monitoring system is used in the neighbouring Slovakia where the total budget of the project was put at as equivalent of 726 million crowns.
($1=24.649 crowns)
