Capita, G4S & Buddi Power GPS Tags as EM Hits 150,000+
With global prison populations on the rise, mainly due to general population growth, governments worldwide face increasing pressure to manage overcrowding and its associated costs. However, while expanding prison infrastructure remains challenging, many international businesses do not prioritise investment in physical facilities.
Instead, many countries are adopting electronic tagging systems as a scalable, cost-effective alternative to traditional incarceration.
Rising incarceration rates worldwide
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), “the number of people held in prison worldwide has started to rise again. An estimated 11.5 million people were detained globally in 2022, 5.5% more than a decade ago. Thus, 144 persons out of every 100,000 people worldwide were in prison in 2022.”
The data further indicates that men represent almost 94 per cent of the global prison population. It finds that “in 2022, about half of the global population in prison was incarcerated in Asia, almost four percentage points more than in 2012 and a third in the Americas.”
The telecommunications backbone of electronic monitoring
Electronic tagging, or electronic monitoring (EM), involves using ankle-worn devices designed to track the movements of individuals under judicial supervision. These systems are built on core telecommunications technologies:
Radio Frequency (RF) Technology: RF technologies monitor whether individuals stay within a particular indoor location, usually their home, place of work, or school. Individuals wear an electronic tag, generally around the ankle, communicating via RF with a monitoring box. RF-based systems are widely used to enforce curfews and are favoured for their long battery life.
Global Positioning System (GPS): GPS tags around the ankle use the same technology as smartphones and tablets. They locate individuals by triangulating data from multiple satellites. GPS effectively monitors exclusion and inclusion zones but requires regular charging and may encounter signal challenges indoors or in urban environments.
Community Justice Scotland provides further clarity: “EM uses a radio frequency signal to monitor someone’s location to check if they comply with an order or licence. The person wears a tag around their ankle, about the size of a digital watch. The tag communicates with a monitoring unit installed in their home or an address where they should not approach or enter.”
Key providers in the electronic tagging ecosystem
The electronic monitoring market is serviced by a mix of multinational corporations and specialist technology firms, often operating in partnership with government agencies.
Five companies lie at the heart of the UK’s GPS tagging system: Capita, G4S, Airbus, Telefonica and Buddi. It’s a combination of private third-party responsibilities, with Capita as a core actor.
Allied Universal has a significant global footprint: “With a large electronic monitoring footprint worldwide, we are a global provider of electronic monitoring technologies for the criminal justice industry.”
The company further states, “Since we invented the first GPS offender monitoring device offered to government agencies, we have led other technological breakthroughs and provided innovative and reliable equipment and software.”
Global adoption and expansion
Electronic tagging is now operational in approximately 40 countries, including the United States, the UK and several European nations. “Since its operational beginnings in the United States in 1982—where its prototypes were first experimented with in the 1960s and 1970s—the electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders has spread to approximately 40 countries around the world.”
Although comprehensive global statistics are limited, the scale of adoption is evident. “EM usage in the criminal legal system is up significantly, with more than 150,000 people on EM at any given time in state and local monitoring in the United States alone.” The global figure is undoubtedly higher, with widespread usage noted in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
The demand for electronic tagging will grow as governments continue to explore alternatives to traditional incarceration. Given the sector’s dependence on advanced telecommunications—particularly RF and GPS technologies—collaborations between security firms and telecom providers are expected to deepen.
To extend EM technology, private sector innovation plays a critical role in shaping the way public sector agencies implement modern criminal justice solutions.
Explore the latest edition of Mobile Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Tech & AI LIVE and Cloud & 5G LIVE. Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.
Sign up to receive the Mobile Magazine weekly newsletter.
Mobile Magazine is a BizClik brand
