Elec­tron­ic tag­ging will be used to keep track of of­fend­ers in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence cas­es, Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney said on Tues­day. He in­di­cat­ed this while pi­lot­ing the Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing Bill in the Sen­ate. The bill would fa­cil­i­tate of­fend­ers to be fit­ted with elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems to keep track of their where­abouts.

Vol­ney said as crime in­creased and be­came more com­plex, greater promi­nence was fo­cused on sys­tems and re­sources for crime-fight­ing. He said the law was one mea­sure be­ing tak­en by Gov­ern­ment to over­haul the pe­nal sys­tem and in­tro­duce new sen­tenc­ing op­tions to re­duce prison over­crowd­ing and make for more ef­fec­tive prison man­age­ment. It re­quires a three-fifths vote for pas­sage in Par­lia­ment.

He said Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing a stand against do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and the bill "would go a long way to­ward re­turn­ing lib­er­ty to vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and their chil­dren. "Gov­ern­ment has heard the pleas of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence vic­tims and ac­tivists," he added. He said of­fend­ers would be less li­able to seek out vic­tims, and po­lice will al­so have bet­ter means to re­in­force pro­tec­tion or­ders.

He said the tag­ging sys­tem would not be used for vi­o­lent of­fend­ers, in­clud­ing those pe­nalised for mur­der, rape, kid­nap­ping, firearms and oth­er such of­fences. He said the sys­tem us­ing GPS fa­cil­i­ties would al­low for mon­i­tor­ing of of­fend­ers at cer­tain lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing track­ing their where­abouts in re­al time. He par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ed its use for ju­ve­nile of­fend­ers and the use of the de­vice in lieu of de­ten­tion.

He said it costs $315.57 a day to main­tain a pris­on­er and tag­ging can re­duce prison num­bers. Vol­ney said the Gov­ern­ment had re­ceived ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est which give a to­tal cost for elec­tron­ic de­vices of US$13 to US$20 dai­ly. He said the bill's pro­vi­sions in­clude hav­ing a mon­i­tor­ing man­ag­er, a deputy man­ag­er as well as fines and im­pris­on­ment for those among ser­vice providers who leak pro­tect­ed in­for­ma­tion on those be­ing mon­i­tored.

He said draft pa­role leg­is­la­tion would be brought to the Par­lia­ment soon. Par­lia­ment al­so passed the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty Bill on Tues­day.