Community supervision orders to be extended

Less people will be subject to prison sentences in Scotland and
more subject to community supervision with electronic tagging
following an announcement by justice minister Jim Wallace.

Wallace announced that under the Criminal Justice Bill, which
will become law this year, the contract for providing electronic
tagging throughout Scotland has been awarded to Reliance Monitoring
Services from May 2002. The company already runs a pilot project
based in Hamilton.

Under the bill, Restriction of Liberty Orders (RLOs) will be
introduced which will allow tagging to be a condition of probation
orders, drug treatment and testing orders and a condition imposed
by the parole board. The move has been welcomed by most offender
related associations as meaning less people will be jailed for
short periods with little or no support.

Wallace said: “The pilot schemes have shown that RLOs add to the
range of community disposals giving offenders another way to begin
to break the cycle of activity which may be at the route of their
criminal behaviour.”