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By Harriette Halepis

The city of London, England, has begun experimenting with GPS trackers and dangerous mental health patients. The decision to tag mental health patients with GPS tracking bracelets and anklets was made following the gruesome death of an elderly man.

Convicted rapist Terrence O’Keefe strangled 73 year old David Kemp after escaping from a mental health facility. This incident prompted London authorities to begin tracking all mental health patients that are given day passes, or those being transferred from one facility to another. The hope is that through constant monitoring of dangerous mental health patients, incidents such as the one mentioned above will not happen again.

Computers will monitor every move made by mental health patients that are not within the walls of a secure facility. While this solution seems like a logical one, some are not so sure that tracking only those patients outside of mental health facilities is enough.

When O’Keefe strangled his victim, he had been on the run from authorities for quite some time. Were O’Keefe fitted with a GPS tracking system prior to his escape, police could have found him almost immediately. However, under the new London tracking project laws, O’Keefe would not have been fitted with a GPS device at all, since he was inside of the facility before he escaped.

Thus, many London locals are calling for the tracking of all mental health patients inside and outside of mental health facilities. On the flip side, human rights activists are claiming that not all mental health patients are dangerous. In fact, some patients wiling enter mental health facilities on their own. Then again, those mental health patients with criminal records are a bit of a different story.

If the new London tracking program proves to be successful, dangerous mental health patients throughout England will be tracked regularly. Presently, those mental health patients that are outside of facilities are tagged with curfew bracelets that warn authorities when a patient is outside of a facility after curfew hours.

The transition from curfew bracelets to full-time tracking bracelets would be an easy one, and it’s also a transition that many citizens and government officials are willing to make. Londoners feel as though the constant monitoring of dangerous mental health patients will help to make London’s streets a bit safer. All London eyes are on the current tracking project, and many have high hopes that this project will be a success.