In May, the new Police Crime Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill introduces some important changes to Electronic Monitoring (EM) that my team and I need to be aware of and will have been briefed on ahead of their launch.

From the middle of June/beginning of July, for community disposals only, Practitioners will have some additional authority to vary EM curfew requirements without going back to court. Courts will now have the option to increase the length of the EM curfew from one, to two years and my Practitioners will have to authority to vary when, during the day those hours take place on a licence. They can also split those hours across the day and amend their Person on Probation (PoP) address without going back to court. They will need to complete a form, which will be approved by my Head of PDU, that notifies both the court and the EMS provider. This saves my practitioner time and supports their PoP to better comply with their EM requirements.

The new rules will not be applied retrospectively, so are only available to PoP sentenced on or after May 16th. This means that for a while, my team will be managing two separate processes.

To support my team and champion these changes, support learning and development and start to measure how EM is used across probation, my region will welcome an EM Lead (SPOC) who will help us implement and embed new processes, measure usage/collect data from probation and EPF (courts) to form a management information dashboard and drive innovation. All upcoming changes to EM will be captured and presented in a new EM Operational Framework, a guide that will be available before the PCSC Bill is introduced. If I want to know more about how my team can use EM alongside SI, toolkits CRS to rehabilitate and manage risk.