Scotland Yard is investigating claims that workers with the outsourcing firm Capita were paid by convicts to deliberately fit electronic ankle tags loosely, allowing them to slip the devices off when they wanted to go out. Staff at the company, which runs the government’s Electronic Monitoring Service, were allegedly paid £400 a time to help at least 32 offenders beat their court-imposed curfews, according to a report in the Sun. It said 14 people, including three current and former EMS workers, had been arrested in connection with “offences involving the monitoring of offenders”. Electronic tags, which are used to monitor conditions of a court or prison order, are usually securely attached to the ankles of defenders so they cannot be removed. Capita was handed a £400m six-year contract for electronic tagging in July 2014.

Source: The Guardian February 04, 2017 10:30 UTC