A probation officer demonstrates the use of a Personal Identification Device on his ankle in Surrey, British Columbia, August 16, 2012. The province says the new system will be required to have a GPS component.Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
The B.C. government is looking for a new electronic monitoring system that will allow it to keep tabs on high-risk offenders, with the Justice Minister acknowledging the current system is "out of date."
The issue came to the fore last September after the killing of 17-year-old Serena Vermeersch in Surrey. The man charged in her death, Raymond Caissie, was a high-risk offender who was not being monitored electronically. The province's monitoring system was revealed as archaic, requiring the use of a home telephone line. Jurisdictions such as Edmonton and Calgary use systems that rely on GPS instead.
B.C. Justice Minister Suzanne Anton told a house committee this week that the government will be issuing a request for proposals for a new electronic monitoring system by the end of the month. Though she has defended the current system – and at times continued to do so at the committee meeting – she said the new system will be required to have a GPS component.
"The electronic monitoring, which we have right now, is designed to monitor curfews and to see whether people are at home. That's what it can do," Ms. Anton said on Tuesday. "The enhanced monitoring of high-risk offenders, which is what we will be going out with now on the new contract, does allow a broader supervision of individuals who are being monitored because it will have GPS features that will enable the system to know where people are. It's a completely different system than the previous system. That's the problem that we are fixing."
In an interview Wednesday, Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner said she looks forward to the new system being implemented.
"Any system that will allow the tracking of high-risk offenders through GPS is a good thing, in my opinion," she said.
Spokesmen with both the RCMP and the Vancouver Police Department declined comment on the new system and referred inquiries to correctional officials.
Mike Farnworth, the opposition NDP's justice critic, said there is no question the current system is "antiquated."
"Other provinces are using far more effective technology than we are," he said.
Ms. Anton declined an interview request. In an e-mail, a ministry spokeswoman said, "B.C. Corrections has been exploring potential options for improvement and expects to announce more details in the coming weeks."
At the committee meeting, Ms. Anton said a report on the electronic monitoring system was written by a third party and delivered to staff in December. She said the report contains information from law enforcement agencies and "would need to be severed for safety and security reasons" before it could be released. She said it would not be released until the request-for-proposals process was complete.
Mr. Farnworth took issue with that decision, noting the government told the public it was ordering the review. He said "the public has a right to know" what it found.
Ms. Anton said the contract for the current system expires in July, making it a logical time to find a new provider.
Though she later said the government is fixing a problem, she also defended the current system, saying: "The existing system is functioning as it's intended. There are no problems with it."
In response, Mr. Farnworth told the meeting his neighbour's Edsel could technically function, "but I wouldn't say that it is the right vehicle for today."