A SCOTTISH company with links to the criminal justice system is developing a tag-type device which could deliver medication to sex offenders after release and monitor biochemical warning signs.
Jakki Balkwill, founder and owner of New World Security Solutions (NWSS), said the Pebble device she was developing would be capable of delivering slow-release medication, including anti-psychotic or anti-depressant drugs, and would include global positioning system (GPS) technology to enable police officers or doctors to locate people easily.
It will also detect changes in an offender's biochemical make-up, including hormone levels, which would alert authorities and allow them to react.
Ms Balkwill said the device was likely to cost about £5000 and last for 15 to 20 years. She contrasted this with the cost of keeping someone in prison for a year, which she put at about £37,500.
She has moved her venture from an office in Hamilton to the Bio-City Scotland laboratory facilities at Newhouse in North Lanarkshire – formerly home to Merck and Organon.
Ms Balkwill is recruiting eight people and targeting a prototype of the Pebble, which she said would be part of a watch-type bracelet, within 24 months.
There has been interest from Holland and the US in the product she is developing.
However, Ms Balkwill emphasised her determination to focus on Scotland and elsewhere in Britain.
She said: "I don't really want to take it to America. I want to keep it more in Scotland. I know these things are more acceptable in America. If I went to America, it would certainty be easier to raise the investment."
Ms Balkwill added: This isn't a Big Brother thing. This is about looking after people and looking after people round about us."
She estimates she will require £3.3 million of funding to commercialise the Pebble, including the cost of licensing, and plans to raise money from investors in Europe.
She said the Pebble could also be used for other offenders, including those who had committed crimes as a result of drug or alcohol addiction.
Ms Balkwill is a member of the Scottish Association for the Study of Offending. She highlighted her links – through SASO – with judges, police, lawyers, the prison service and security firm personnel.
And she noted that Hadleigh Vincent Cammerer, a senior manager in the Scottish Prison Service, was a non-executive director of her company.
Mr Cammerer, who has 23 years' experience with the prison service – having worked for it in England as well as in Scotland – said he was working on a voluntary basis with New World Security Solutions because he was a "great believer" in what the company was trying to achieve.
Ms Balkwill highlighted applications of the Pebble device outwith the criminal justice system, citing as examples potential benefits for people with mental health issues or conditions including diabetes.
Current electronic monitoring in Scotland's criminal justice system involves an offender wearing a tagging device linked to a central computer system where information about his or her presence or absence during a designated restriction period at the restriction address is stored.
Support services company Serco commenced a five-year Electronic Monitoring Scotland contract in 2006 and this was subsequently extended by two more years. Last autumn, it was announced that security company G4S would take over electronic monitoring in Scotland from April 2013.
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