My client Noel was arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife on 7 February 2020. Whilst awaiting trial he was bailed by Nottinghamshire Magistrates’ Court to his daughter’s address, 15 Elstree Road with an electronically tagged bail condition not to attend the marital home, 3 Highfield Avenue, or contact his wife. The tag was fitted by EMS Electronic Monitoring Service.
At approximately 06.00 a week later, Officers of Nottinghamshire Police attended 15 Elstree Road and arrested Noel in the presence of his daughter for “breach of bail conditions”. It was alleged that Noel had breached his conditions on 11 February by being out of his bail address between 20.54 – 20.58 and then 23.02 – 23.43. Noel was conveyed to Mansfield Custody Suite and placed into a cell.
At approximately 08.30 Noel was taken to Nottingham Magistrates’ Court. After waiting in the cells for several hours, he was brought before the Court at approximately 15.00. There it was determined that there had not, in fact, been a breach of any bail condition and Noel was immediately released.
On investigation, it was established that EMS staff had misinterpreted Noel’s bail condition not to attend the marital home as a bail condition to remain within the confines of his daughter’s home. He was in fact free to come and go as he pleased, provided he did not change his residential address from 15 Elstree Road and he did not approach 3 Highfield Avenue. The monitoring staff had ‘breached’ Noel, and caused the Police to arrest him, simply because he had left 15 Elstree at night, despite this not being a violation of his bail. As a result, Police and Court service time and resources were wasted and Noel was wrongly deprived of his liberty for over 9 hours.
Following submissions, Capita on behalf of EMS agreed to pay Noel compensation and his legal fees.
All names/details changed.
Read more here: Electronic Monitoring Mistakes: Playing Tag with People’s Liberty?
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