Wrongly Arrested On Tag

I have recently settled claims on behalf of a client whom I will identify by the name of “David” who suffered wrongful arrest on no less than three occasions in a space of three weeks owing to mistakes made and the monitoring of his electronic tag by the Electronic Monitoring Service (EMS) – indeed, the very same basic error repeated on three occasions.

As I highlighted in a blog in September 2021, the day-to-day monitoring of electronic tags (EMS) is something which has been out-sourced to the private company Capita, who were reported in a 2016 review by the University of Leeds, to be working on a ‘call centre model’ with staff who are generally lacking in probation, social work or other criminal justice sector training or experience. Reflect on that as you read David’s story…

The Electronic Mistake Service

In June 2021 David appeared before Liverpool Crown Court and was convicted of several offences.  In addition to a suspended custodial sentence, David was also sentenced to an electronically monitored curfew requiring him to stay at home daily from 1600h to 0800h for three months.

On the 15th and again on the 16th July 2021, David fell into breach of the curfew, for a total time of approximately 15 minutes.  These breaches should have been reported to the Probation Service as breaches of David’s sentence, with the Probation Service then to determine the appropriate level of response.  However, EMS erroneously reported these breaches directly to Merseyside Police as breaches of court bail causing police officers to attend David’s home on 18th July and arrest him for “breach of bail”.

David was conveyed to his local Custody Suite, notwithstanding the fact that he was suffering from an illness and vomited in the police car, and on reaching the Custody Suite was searched and had his fingerprints taken.

Unfortunately, David suffers from a number of mental health issues, specifically depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, and his prolonged detention in the police station (amounting to almost 22 hours) exacerbated these conditions.

David was also a carer for his disabled mother, and his detention caused them both distress as he was unable to attend to her.

After being held in a police cell overnight David was transferred to Wirral Magistrates’ Court where it was established that he was not in breach of any bail conditions and furthermore that the Probation Service had not requested David’s arrest for breaching his sentence.

He was therefore released from Court after some 26 hours of false imprisonment.

Repeat offenders

Unfortunately, the very same set of events reoccurred a mere two weeks later. 

On 31st July 2021 David again fell into breach of the curfew, for a total of approximately 19 minutes.  Once again, EMS erroneously reported this breach to Merseyside Police as if it were a breach of bail, causing officers to be sent to David’s home on 2nd August, where they arrested him for breach of bail. Once again he was taken to his local Police Station where he went through the entire custodial process as set out above – although this time he was much more swiftly transferred to the Magistrates’ Court, where once again it was determined that he was not in breach of any bail conditions and that the Probation  Service had not requested his arrest and hence he was immediately released, after some 4 hours of unlawful detention.

Third time’s the charm?

This was still not the end of the sorry saga, however. On 6th August 2021 David again fell into breach of the curfew, which once again EMS reported to Merseyside Police as a breach of bail rather than reporting to the Probation Service as a breach of David’s sentence.

Therefore, officers from Merseyside Police were again tasked to attend David’s home and did so on 9 August arresting him for breach of bail, again taking him into Custody where he was processed and detained for over 4 hours. Thankfully on this occasion however, David’s criminal defence solicitor was able to save everybody the time and money that would have been wasted in detaining David overnight to appear before Court the following day – by drawing the Custody staffs’ attention to the fact that that David was not subject to a curfew due to bail conditions, but rather due to a sentence and therefore that the information EMS had given to Merseyside Police was, once again, fundamentally inaccurate.

In total, across these three events David had suffered some 34 hours 24 minutes of false imprisonment and all because of a ‘schoolboy’ error which EMS (Capita) kept repeating.

Whilst it is accepted that on each of these occasions David was genuinely in breach of his curfew – albeit to a relatively minor degree – the fact is that those serving a criminal sentence are not second-class citizens but are often extremely vulnerable individuals who deserve the equal protection of our laws if their rights are infringed.  The villain of this piece is not David but rather EMS who through negligent record keeping and/or administration wrongfully caused David to be incarcerated in distressing circumstances on three separate occasions and wasted significant amounts of police and court time in doing so.

It almost beggars belief that EMS did not learn their lesson after the first such error, but instead went on to repeat it on two further occasions in such a short period of time.

I am pleased to report that I have recently recovered damages for David from EMS for each of these wrongful arrests, totalling £14,000 plus legal costs.

Perhaps that will make EMS think twice about their standards of staff training and management and supervision of offenders – or should we say thrice?

Read more about this case in the case report: Man unlawfully detained for breach of curfew receives compensation payout from CAPITA