Williams Lake to track prolific offenders using GPS ankle bracelets
WILLIAMS LAKE, B.C. — The City of Williams Lake is cracking down on prolific offenders.
This week the city — which was ranked the fourth most dangerous place to live in Canada last year by Maclean’s magazine — signed a contract for the use of GPS ankle bracelets to help reduce crime.
“We have made the decision because of our crime stats to assist the RCMP in allowing the courts to have repeat offenders monitored on a 24-hour-a-day basis no matter where they are,” Mayor Walt Cobb told CFJC Today. “Last year we had 800 calls where the RCMP had to make calls and curfew checks and that’s expensive.”
He says with the new technology, the city will pay police $16 per day per offender, enabling police to monitor roughly 12 prolific offenders in the city no matter where they are. Cobb says an alarm system will sound off alerting the RCMP to any probation breaches, noting “police won’t have to visit them five or six times a day.”