Gail Alexan­der

Do­mes­tic abuse per­pe­tra­tors will be mon­i­tored elec­tron­i­cal­ly via elec­tron­ic an­kle "bracelets" which can help warn fe­male-and male-vic­tims of pos­si­ble abuse, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney has said. Vol­ney elab­o­rat­ed on the plan in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day as he pi­lot­ed leg­is­la­tion for the use of elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing tag­ging. He said the tag­ging mech­a­nism, which op­er­ates on a GPS sys­tem, will be used on­ly on of­fend­ers who are not a se­ri­ous threat to the pub­lic. It will not be used for crimes in­volv­ing rape, mur­der, trea­son and the like.

"This will give the court an­oth­er op­tion...in­stead of putting a man in jail, put an elec­tron­ic tag on him and tell him he can't leave his house," Vol­ney said. "At least his wife and chil­dren will have the com­pa­ny of their hus­band and fa­ther, but he will be con­fined." Vol­ney said the elec­tron­ic tag can par­tic­u­lar­ly be used with re­gard to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es to track per­pe­tra­tors' move­ments. "Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing a stand against do­mes­tic vi­o­lence... women are liv­ing in fear and we want to pro­tect them," he added. He said al­though some women got pro­tec­tion or­ders, they still suf­fered re­peat­ed vi­o­lence and some­times death.

Vol­ney said the Gov­ern­ment had heard the pleas of vic­tims and pro­posed to use the elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing plan to com­ple­ment the pro­tec­tion or­der frame­work. He said it would bet­ter as­sist po­lice to en­force pro­tec­tion or­ders and to as­cer­tain who was vi­o­lat­ing such or­ders and when per­pe­tra­tors were en­ter­ing ex­clud­ed zones. Vol­ney said the mech­a­nism would pro­vide an ear­ly alert to "fear­ful women" that a per­pe­tra­tor was on his way.