Wrongly Arrested for Breaching a Curfew

When, as an expert in civil claims and actions against the Police, I was first approached by my client Jon earlier this year, he very neatly summarised his problem as follows –

“I was arrested and locked up overnight for a breach of bail, namely a curfew. I did not have a curfew included in my bail.  So, Northumbria Police falsely imprisoned me.  My solicitor at the time spoke to the Judge in the morning and both confirmed that I had not breached any bail conditions whatsoever.  I was released.  Northumbria Police have refused my initial request for compensation and I don’t know what to do next.”

I was very happy to assist Jon in his predicament. Jon’s bail conditions were that he had to wear an electronic tag – with the purpose of the tag to ensure that he did not enter an ‘exclusion zone’, he was not subject to a night-time curfew. In other words, his movements were geographically but not time restricted.

As Jon had stated in his initial enquiry, he had pursued matters in his own right, by way of a letter of claim to Northumbria Police – but they had denied liability.

Everything Jon had told me in his initial approach was correct – in April 2023, whilst he was subject to Court bail with an electronic GPS tag, he was visited at his home one evening by officers of Northumbria Police who arrested him for allegedly failing to abide by a curfew – deaf to my client’s remonstrations that he was not under any curfew. Jon was then detained overnight in police custody before being transported to South Tyneside Magistrates Court in handcuffs – only to be released almost immediately upon the morning session of the Court being convened, when it was quickly confirmed that his bail conditions did indeed have no curfew attached.

Whilst it was understandable that Jon should have sought compensation for his loss of liberty from those who had arrested and detained him – Northumbria Police – my experience in such cases taught me to look for another culprit, namely EMS, the Electronic Monitoring Service who were responsible for fitting Jon’s tag, monitoring its data and reporting any breaches to the police for follow up/enforcement.

Who are EMS?

As at June 2024, according to Government statistics, over 20,893 individuals in the UK were subject to one form of ‘electronic monitoring’ or another.

Electronic monitoring tags are worn by individuals subject to various criminal justice orders e.g as a condition of bail, probation, a suspended sentence or community order, or immigration bail. They use a variant of the same GPS technology which powers a ‘Find my iPhone app’ or an air-tag in your luggage, so as to allow the Electronic Monitoring Service to check a person’s location at any given time or even, in some cases, monitor for the presence of alcohol in their bloodstream.

The EMS contract is ‘franchised’ out by the government to private suppliers.

Prior to May 2024, the Electronic Monitoring Service was outsourced to the well-known private venture company Capita. Since that date EMS has been operated by Serco Limited who are involved in similar public-private partnerships in the Criminal Justice sector including running a number of private prisons and providing prisoner transport on what we might call ‘the Court run.’

How I Was Able To Help

Here, and not for the first time in my experience, EMS seemed to have ‘hallucinated’ a breach of Jon’s bail conditions, which did not in fact exist. They were responsible for then raising a false breach report to the police, which the police followed up in good faith. The police, by arresting and detaining Jon, might be able to hide behind the “reasonable belief” of an offence which underpins their arrest powers under Section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and which was based on the incorrect information fed to them by EMS.

As Northumbria Police Legal Services put it in their letter rejecting Jon’s claim – “Northumbria Police were entitled to believe that the information provided to them by the EMS service was accurate.” Meanwhile, EMS themselves had not detained my client, and so could not be sued for wrongful arrest/false imprisonment.

I advised Jon that EMS could, however, be pursued under Article 5 on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as enshrined in UK law under the Human Rights Act 1998, as it was their actions which had caused Jon to be improperly deprived of his liberty (through the unwitting agency of Northumbria Police).

My investigations revealed that there had been a temporary curfew imposed upon my client requiring him to remain in his residence between the hours of 5pm and midnight for the first two days of his bail, in order to allow for his tag to be fitted – in other words, to ensure he would be home when the EMS operative arrived with the equipment. Once the tag was fitted, however, there was no continuing curfew – yet several days later Jon was arrested in the circumstances described above. What should have been blindingly obvious to EMS was that if they were relying on tag data (as they were) to claim that Jon was breaching his curfew – that in itself showed that the curfew was no longer effective, because the tag was in place. Instead, too much data, combined with too little common sense, led to Jon being wrongfully deprived of his liberty.

Jon had been seeking justice for his wrongful arrest for over 2 years when he first approached me; I am pleased to confirm that just over 3 months later, I was able to secure a full admission of liability from Capita/EMS for him, and I have recently settled his claim for damages in the sum of £5,750 plus his legal fees.

I am sure Jon would be the first to agree that his is a perfect example of how even the most apparently straightforward claims can prove to be anything but – and that all those who have suffered infringement of their civil rights and liberty can benefit from the right advice and the right representation – from the right solicitor.

In fact, I will give Jon the last word in this blog post, from the review that he kindly posted on Trustpilot-

“I searched for a solicitor but found that the solicitors in my area showed little interest in my situation. I then came across Iain on a Google search. This man was incredible from the very start. He replied very quickly to my initial message. I cannot recommend this man highly enough. I hope I’m never in this situation ever again but if I am Iain is the man I will call. He is honest, transparent, fair, trustworthy, professional and empathetic. He doesn’t judge and takes immense pride in fighting for justice and accountability. If Iain gets to see this, I want to publicly thank him for helping me with my case. I would recommend Iain without hesitation to anyone who has been unfortunate enough to have been treated unfairly by police etc.”

My client’s name has been changed.

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