Based on good experiences and solutions applied in Israel, the Justice Ministry in Bratislava would like to monitor more and more criminals with tracking devices. It is an important argument that the daily cost of convicts’ care will decrease from 40 euros to 4, V4 news agency reports.

The Slovak Justice Ministry has extremely positive experience with the use of tracking devices. They have been introduced over the course of the past three years. Convicts and prisoners on temporary leave are both equipped with these devices. So far, they were used on more than six hundred occasions since their introduction in 2015. Out of these, some 200 belong to convicts who have to wear them at all times, the press service of the Slovak Justice Ministry reported.

Offenders are obligated to wear them permanently when the suspended punishment appears to be too lenient, but actual jail time can be assessed as too strict. In such cases, they determine exactly whether the convicts are completely prohibited from leaving their place of residence, or they are exempt from the ban for certain hours and distances.

The costs of care per convict also decrease to a tenth of the original sum. While an inmate costs 40 euros a day to the Slovak budget, a person who wears a tracking device but stays at home only incurs 4 euros of costs per day.

In the area of electronic monitoring, the Slovak Justice Ministry cooperates closely with Israel, where they have been using this as an alternative form of law enforcement since 2005. The tracking infrastructure used in Slovakia is also the result of an Israeli innovation.