So, today in Government cock-ups news:
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The Police will keep tabs on offenders (especially sex offenders) using `satellite tracking', by which they mean some kind of GPS thingy which transmits its position back to Mission Control periodically.
(Now, this does sound a bit draconian, given that some of the people who might be affected are parents who take photos of their kids and fifteen year-olds who kiss their girl/boyfriends, but just remember: if you don't agree, the terrorists will win! Oh, sorry, wrong war. Whatever.... Anyway, the intention here is supposed to be to deter vigilante action by being so mean to offenders that the Sun-reading hordes won't feel it necessary to try to lynch any local paediatricians. I have not the slightest doubt that this will play out exactly as intended by the Home Office.)
How well will this tracking idea work, then? In an attempt to find out, the Home Office is currently running a trial. But actually it doesn't matter:
Although Mr Blunkett will take note of the outcome of the pilot scheme, aides say he is determined to push ahead with the plan.
Now, where have we seen that attitude before?
(The answer to the question, by the way, is, ``pretty well, so long as you're not worried about offenders travelling around on the Underground, inside cars or trains, in very built up areas, or anywhere else that a GPS receiver may not be able to see enough of the sky to get a decent fix.'' So that's alright then.)
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Simultaneously those same offenders are going to be interviewed using lie detectors to make sure that they're not breaking the conditions of their parole. Now, if you've read anything on the subject you'll have discovered that lie detectors don't work at all, but of course Blunkett Knows Best, and has pointed out that he's not talking about just any old lie detector; this is twenty-first century technology. Just like biometrics. So that's alright then.
(Actually it turns out that this is a bad idea that's been around for quite a while. Like ID cards, I suspect that the polygraph belongs in the Idiocy Which Will Not Die bucket.)
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And in unrelated developments, the government turn out to be unable to ship postal ballot papers to victims of their all-postal-voting pilot in the north of England.
(Note, of course, that the inability of the government to ship out correct ballot papers -- containing a list of candidates and a unique number, and not very hard to print -- shouldn't make us doubt whether they'd be able to ship out 40 million ID cards -- containing all kinds of complicated and untried security features. Because they'll hire Crapita to do that. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?)
But it doesn't matter. Nobody's going to vote in the elections anyway, are they?
I promise I'll write something which isn't about cock-ups, government or otherwise, in the near future. In the meantime, yet another holiday photo:
Comments
Posted by Roy Badami, Friday, 28 May 2004 19:01 (link):
the government turn out to be unable to ship postal ballot papers to victims of their all-postal-voting pilot in the north of England.
Not only that, but they managed to print the wrong candidates on lots of papers that were shipped.
So I look forward to receiving an ID card which categorically proves that I'm someone else.
-roy
Posted by Bob, Saturday, 29 May 2004 17:04 (link):
What I can't understand is why restrict the new tagging proposals just to (recidivist ?) sex offenders? Why not persistent drink-drive offenders before they go on to kill other road users or pedestrians? It doesn't make sense to me.
Look at these two horrific examples in the news of drink-driving leading to fatal accidents, both from Yorkshire & Humberside, the region where Blunkett comes from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2062902.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/3335159.stm
Both the convicted drivers had strings of previous convictions for drink-driving.
Posted by Bob, Sunday, 30 May 2004 20:28 (link):
Discovery of a research paper online with a detailed analysis of homicide statistics for 1997 by the HoC Library, published in 1999, has induced me to post here again.
The impression created by Blunkett's proposals to introduce tagging for sex offenders - providing Labour is elected for a third term in office - is that tagging will do much to prevent terrible murders by predatory paedophiles and rapists. However, any assurances are largely misplaced because the number of victims a year from such crimes is (fortunately) very small. The relevant passages from the research paper:
"Homicide in England and Wales includes the offences of murder, manslaughter and infanticide. In 738 deaths were initially recorded as homicide. This was a 9% rise from 1996, exceeded this century only by 753 in 1995. Around 15% of homicides as recorded by the police are generally reclassified as other offences following police and court action.
"As homicide victims, the sexes differ. In England and Wales in 1997, a third of homicide victims were female. In the early 1990s females accounted for more (around 40% of) victims. Almost four fifths of female victims and just over half of male victims knew their killer. A present or former partner or lover killed almost half of female victims. Around a third of men were killed by someone they knew (but not family/partner) and another third by a stranger. . .
"By age group, children under the age of one are most at risk of homicide with 57 offences per million population in 1997. Apart from this group, males between the ages of 16 and 29 are next most at risk with 27 offences per million population. These compare to the overall average risk for all age groups of 12 offences currently reorded as homicide per million population in 1997." - from: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-056.pdf
For comparison:
"On average 3,000 people are killed or seriously injured each year in drink drive collisions and 15% of all deaths on the road involve drivers who are over the legal limit.
"Drinking and driving occurs across a wide range of age groups but particularly among young men aged 17-29 in both casualties and positive breath tests.
"When the Government first published statistics in 1979, there were 1,640 people killed by drink drivers. The latest provisional figures, from 2002, show that some 560 people were killed in collisions in which a driver was over the legal limit." - from: http://www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/campaigns/drinkdrive/drinkdrive01.htm
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