Email

Nearly a month after Queensland Department of Community Safety (DCS) announced that they would be budgeting to include GPS monitoring for convicted sex offenders, a plan is now in place to begin testing the different devices on the market. On June 27, 2011, the DCS released expression of interest documents for vendors who would like to be considered for this project.

During the next three weeks, the department will receive and review proposals for different GPS products, and narrow the list down to a few that will be tested during the trial period. The final list of vendors is set to be selected by July 25, 2011.

A one-week trial period will begin August 8, 2011, which will determine what GPS monitoring system is best suited for the needs of the DCS. Employees of the DCS have volunteered to participate in the trial, acting as the sex offenders the devices will eventually be used on. The DCS employees are a great control group, because they already know what to look out for during the trial.

They will look for how location information is gathered, whether actively, in real-time, or passively, where movements are logged and retrieved at a later time. The trial will also test how the devices perform in different environments, such as the mountains, the beach, or the gym. They will also test how easy the devices are to tamper with, and what kind of alert systems are in place.

Currently, sex offenders in the state are monitored with ankle bracelets, through radio frequency. The technology was once incredibly useful, but now mostly serves as a back-up system for GPS monitoring, a much more advanced and accurate method of tracking. The Queensland government is setting aside $9.6 million over the next three years, to bring sex offender monitoring up to date.

Article Written by Marisa O’Connor