Some offenders are having to go to prison because they do not live in an area where there is a good enough signal for electronic monitoring.
There are almost 6000 people serving sentences on electronic monitoring. Photo: Unsplash / Matthew Ansley
The Corrections Department could not say how often this happens but has recently signed a $180 million contract for new equipment, which it says will improve coverage so fewer people are disadvantaged.
At the moment, there are about 5800 people serving electronically-monitored community sentences or orders, including 1600 people who are on electronically-monitored bail.
Human rights lawyer Michael Bott said he had had clients who could not be tracked this way because of where they live.
"There are cases, for example, with people that I've had as clients in rural areas or on extreme parts of the East Coast where they are unable to serve their sentence amongst their whānau - which is also a protective factor - simply because there's a lack of signal strength."
Corrections said the decision was not always about signal coverage. The victim might live close by, there could be no access to rehabilitation programmes or no one willing to have the person stay with them.
Meanwhile, the Green Party says the people who don't have the cellphone reception for electronic monitoring and instead go to prison are most likely Māori and poorer people.
Justice spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman, who has worked as a defence lawyer, said Māori men were more likely to be arrested and charged in the first place, meaning they were already more at risk of the practice.
She said arbitrarily detaining people for what is essentially a technology glitch is an egregious breach of the Bill of Rights Act.
Australian researcher Dr Marietta Martinovic has studied electronic monitoring and said New Zealand's use of it is the highest in the Western world.
Dr Martinovic, who also worked as a community Corrections officer, said it was a better option than prison.
She said while GPS equipment could not reach some areas, radio signals should be able to cover these.
"If one's not working the other one picks up," Dr Martinovic said.
"I do think that is a problem, if people are denied basically being released out in the community on the technology simply on the basis of not living in an area that has access to technology."
Dr Martinovic is hopeful Corrections' new equipment, which uses both types of signal, will solve some of these problems but the Department could not say if it meant more people will be monitored instead of going to prison.
A 2017 report by advocacy organisation JustSpeak found there was a wide range of accommodation unsuited to electronic bail, including apartments, caravans and tents.
Chairman Jordan Anderson said not enough had changed in the last four years.
However, she said the millions spent on electronic monitoring would be better spent on rehabilitation and reintegration programmes.
"There's huge amount of investment in this technology for surveillance and if we were able to relocate some of that money and reinvest it at the other end, we'd be able to fund community support services," Anderson said.
"Communities are the people that are best placed to know how to support their own."
Howard League for Penal Reform spokesperson Cosmo Jeffery told Morning Report that money would be better spent on halfway houses.
"The Howard League supports technology that gets people out of jail, we know that jail doesn't work, we know that lots of people don't get rehabilitated.
"We think that $180 million would be better spent looking at how we can help people get out of jail and often people can't leave prison because they don't have correct or acceptable housing.
"They might live in a tent or they might live in overcrowded situations and often it's Māori or Polynesian people who fit into this category."
"We need evidence-based policy" - Howard League for Penal Reform spokesperson Cosmo Jeffery
However, since the group represents those in Canterbury, he said he was not sure how much benefit that solution would bring to the area because there was already good signal coverage.
"No doubt some people would be able to go out of prison and not spend their sentence inside if they had better coverage, but since Corrections hasn't done any research who would know how much of this money would benefit how many people."
The Parole Board said it was working with Corrections to understand the new tech and did not yet know whether more people would be eligible for electronically-monitored parole.