JCWI Press Release

22 September 2004

Statement of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants on new regulations on tracking and tagging of asylum seekers coming into force on Friday 1 October 2004

Habib Rahman, JCWI Chief Executive, said:

"We welcome voice verification as potentially helpful to people who otherwise have to report in person to a police station.

"However, tagging and tracking are usually penalties for serious crimes and their use on asylum seekers is unjust and cruelly stigmatising. Asylum seekers only "crime" has been to ask for the UK's protection from persecution and the vast majority comply with immigration control.

"We are deeply concerned that the fallibility of tagging equipment could affect the credibility of asylum applicants' claims* and that GPS satellite tracking, when introduced, could constitute an intrusion of privacy which is disproportionate to the goal of achieving immigration control.

"If voice verification is normally sufficient for carrying out immigration control, we cannot see why tagging and tracking should have any place in the system."

Notes to editors:

*. In reply to his question about the rate of failure of electronic tagging devices, Member of the Scottish Parliament Donald Gorrie was told by the Scottish Executive that 1,617 offenders had been electronically monitored since 1 May 2002. Of those, there had been a total of 237 incidences where the central computer system had identified a malfunction, or potential malfunction, of part of the electronic monitoring equipment: 48 in 2002, 111 in 2003 and 78 in
2004. These incidents involved 137 separate tags - only slightly less than ten per cent of all tags used. As a failure to co-operate with use of the device could constitute a breach of reporting conditions and result in detention, JCWI is concerned that equipment fallibility may lead to some asylum seekers' credibility and asylum claim being jeopardized.