Ankle Bracelets Won't Protect Women From Domestic Violence

Source: Help@Hand Australia

The Australian NSW minister for the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault, Jodie Harrison and the NSW premier, Chris Minns say the proposed reforms to fit violent offenders with ankle bracelet will help protect families and their children from ongoing abuse.

Serial entrepreneur and Scientist Sir Ray Avery says that ankle bracelet technology proposed to protect women from violent abuse by a partner subject to Domestic Violence Order is stone age technology and will do little to prevent women from being killed or abused.

He says "nearly every week in NZ we see a jewellery store or a bottle shop attacked by men wearing an ankle bracelet covered in aluminium kitchen foil to block their ankle strap signal."

It’s called "foiling".

Dozens of people on bail or serving sentences of home detention are breaching their conditions with the help of a humble product found in most Kiwi homes, a Corrections investigations found.

Jodie Harrison has said the electronic monitoring changes would take the longest to be implemented if the laws are passed, with Minns warning the government needed time to get the technology right and would listen to victim-survivors on the finer details.

Sir Ray says this initiative is a waste of time and money and in the meantime, many more women may be killed or abused while the Australian government works through this.

Sir Ray says for more than two years we have been rolling out free HelpatHand www.helpathand.au wearable personal emergency response watches to victims at risk of Domestic violence across Australia and New Zealand and saving lives.

Sir Ray says it’s a simple premise: putting the safety of the victims and their families in their own hands rather than the hands of their abusers.

The personal emergency response watches we provide were originally designed for monitoring critically ill patients but we repurposed the technology specifically to look after victims of Domestic violence.

So we track and trace their movements 24/7 and if they need help they can press a silent alarm button and this opens a three way link between the victim, our call centre and the Police Priority 1 response alert.

Police can be at the scene in a few minutes and know what’s happening at the scene before they arrive.

And we can do this now.

So, Sir Ray says "let's use "state of the art "proven personal emergency response technology which is available today to look after the safety and wellbeing of victims of Domestic violence rather than trying to upgrade Alcatraz ankle bracelets."

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