“You Cannot Really Hide”: Experiences of Probation Officers and Young Offenders with GPS Tracking in Winnipeg, Canada

ABSTRACT

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada experienced high levels of auto theft and joy riding and related public safety offenses, committed in the main by Indigenous Canadian youth (Linden, 2010; Owen, 2008a). The initial police-probation response, the Winnipeg Auto Theft Suppression Strategy (WATSS) reduced the rates of this, but in 2008, for political rather than professional reasons, a Global Positioning System (GPS)–tracking pilot was added to the strategy, in the expectation that auto theft rates would decline still further. An official evaluation was commissioned from the University of Manitoba, and undertaken as research for a Masters Degree dissertation. This article sets the GPS pilot in the context of political developments around electronic monitoring (EM) in Canada, and draws selectively on qualitative aspects of the evaluation to describe and analyze the official (mostly probation officer) and offender perspectives on the introduction and use of tracking, alongside more traditional means of supervision.

KEYWORDS:

• Auto-theft
• GPS tracking
• police-probation programs
• young offender

Notes

My dissertation, on which this article is part based, was written under the name of Pearson and remains referenced as such throughout.