11th Electronic Monitoring Conference: presentations, workshop results and more!

On the 16th of April, the 11th edition of the Electronic Monitoring Conference started. More than 230 participants from 40 countries attended the event in the wonderful city of Zagreb. The conference was jointly organised with the Probation Service in the Republic of Croatia and the theme of this year was ‘Blurring Boundaries, making and breaking connections’.

Blurring Boundaries

Electronic monitoring (EM) has matured into a commonplace penal tool used widely across Europe and beyond. Its applications appear to be limitless and its purposes diverse.

As a result, it is being viewed increasingly as a panacea for a range of societal challenges within and beyond criminal justice leading to numerous uses including in the areas of mental health, domestic violence; terrorism and immigration and diverse target groups including mental health patients, children and young people, victims of domestic violence as well as offenders.

The expansion of existing and potential target areas and groups and the goals and purposes of EM has contributed to blurring of the normative and operational boundaries within which EM is used.

Sharing and learning

During the three-day event, the participants got the chance to be updated about the newest technical developments in EM, to hear the latest experiences with EM from the different probation services and to exchange ideas on the topic. Four presentations were held and in the workshops the topics were further discussed. The conference started with the “Croatian electronic monitoring build-up session”, in which the implementation and use of electronic monitoring in Croatia was explained. This session was followed by a presentation given by Prof. Anthea Hucklesby about “Blurring boundaries with electronic monitoring; (mental) health, immigration and radicalism”. On the second day Deborah Thompson and Prof. Hannah Graham presented their work about “App technologies, probation and electronic monitoring”. After their presentations, it was time for the topic Police and electronic monitoring. Presentations were held by Jeff Hudgkinson and Prof. Anthea Hucklesby. On Wednesday the 18th of April Prof. Kristel Beyens held the final presentation of the 11th Electronic Monitoring Conference, about “Electronic monitoring and the problem of net-widening”.