Funding boost for criminal justice IT

The Home Office has confirmed an extra £800m funding for the Criminal Justice IT (CJIT) programme, on top of the £1.2bn already pledged.

The additional money will be used to ensure that all criminal justice staff can communicate through a single, linked IT infrastructure.

John Suffolk, director general of the CJIT programme said in May that a further £800m would be required 'to make a joined up system a reality', (Computing, 12 May).

'By March 2008 anyone involved in criminal justice should have electronic access to the information they need across the breadth of their dealings,' says the 'Cutting Crime, Delivering Justice, A Strategic Plan for Criminal Justice 2004 - 2008' report, published this week.

'Over £2bn is being invested in systems and infrastructure up until 2007-2008,' it says.

The report outlines the government's intention to cut crime by 15 per cent, and includes plans to track the country's most prolific criminals using GPS satellite technology.

'The introduction of new tagging systems with satellite (GPS) tracking will make it easier and less time consuming for officers to ensure that sentence or bail conditions such as curfews are adhered to or that the person can be caught and dealt with swiftly if they break their curfew or area restrictions,' says the report.

The government has yet to work out the full plans for the system.

'We don't have a lot of details but we expect pilots to start later this year,' said a Home Office spokeswoman.

'It's all about targeting prolific offenders and we know there are around 5,000 people that commit nearly one in 10 crimes, so we are asking local areas to notify their worst offenders,' she said.

• (Blob) The CJIT Unit is tendering for two new contracts - one for hosting and one for application development - as part of the Exchange programme to set up data-sharing systems between the six criminal justice agencies. The deals are expected to be signed in March 2005.