Our Government’s commitment to introduce electronic monitoring for high-risk family violence perpetrators has been highly successful in making our communities a safer place.
Since its inception in 2017, 136 perpetrators have been monitored under this program, and 75 victims have been issued with GPS monitored duress alarms.
Additionally, an independent review of the program, tabled in parliament last year, found it has resulted in improved police response times, as well as a significant decrease in dangerous incidents for victims.
Given the success of the program, our Government has committed a further $2.4 million of funding to continue the program.
Pleasingly, the Federal Government has also seen the benefits from the success of our program, and recently announced a $20 million commitment to roll out a trial of electronic monitoring of family violence perpetrators nationwide.
The initial trial focused on fitting high-risk family violence perpetrators with ankle devices that are under constant surveillance through GPS and other technologies.
Under our Tasmanian model, high-risk family violence victims are also able to be issued with a duress alarm that also has GPS tracking capabilities. These duress alarms afford victims an additional layer of protection and the GPS tracking provides them with confidence that a police response is a priority in managing their safety.
We established a dedicated unit with specialist officers within our Community Corrections to monitor all GPS devices across Tasmania and respond to critical risk situations. When a perpetrator’s movements indicate that there has been a breach of an order, or that there is a risk to a victim, this team works to immediately manage the situation in real-time, and coordinate an immediate and proportionate response with Tasmania Police.
The success of our electronic monitoring program - attracting Federal funding for other states and territories to trial their own programs, along with our Government's $2.4 million funding to continue the program - demonstrates our Government's strong and continued commitment to keeping Tasmanians safe.