Manitoba car thieves to wear GPS locators

Twenty Manitoba car thieves will be fitted with GPS tracking devices in the fallas part of a one-year pilot project to fight auto theft, the provincial government said Wednesday.

Under the program, the highest-riskrepeat offenders will wear location-monitoring devices such as ankle bracelets.

Justice Minister Dave Chomiak has previously said the effectiveness of GPS monitoring was inconclusive.

But Wednesday, he said Manitoba will partner with Nova Scotia to track car thieves using the technology. Nova Scotia has considerable experience using GPS monitoring devices to track offenders and will help train Manitoba officials, provincial officials said.

The $336,000 project will begin in the fall, following consultation with other justice system participants.

Conservative justice critic Kelvin Goertzen, who has been calling for GPS monitoring of criminals for two years, welcomed the news, but said he was suspicious of the timing.

"It's clearly a flip-flop on their position," he said. "I think the concern is that they probably don't have as much commitment to it as we would like, given their past statements about it.

"I think they just simply did this because it's politics on the eve of an election," he added.

'Shame factor'

James Lathlin, aformer car thief who is now an anti-crime activist in Winnipeg,applauded the province's decision touse the monitoring devices.

In the early 1990s,Lathlin admits, he was aprolific car thief.Now, he says the threat ofhaving to wear an ankle bracelet would have stopped him from stealing cars because of the"shame factor."

"If you're wearing shorts and you have this big steel thing around your ankle, it's automatically, like, everywhere you go everyone's going to know what that is and people are going to be so mad at you," he said.

"No one's going to want to be around you and no one's going to walk with you because that's basically putting a big sign on you saying you're acriminal."

Manitoba Public Insurance estimates that a car is stolen every hour, on average, in the province.

Manitoba holds the dubious distinction of having the highest auto-theft rate in the country, according to Statistics Canada.

In Winnipeg, 1,712 motor vehicle thefts per 100,000 population were reported in 2005, the last year for which there are statistics, whereas in Toronto there were 306 thefts reported per 100,000 population.

'Certain amount of discipline' required

People in Saskatchewan, where such tracking devices have been used for about four years, say the devices aren't the only answer.

About 80 young offenders in Saskatchewan have worn electronic tracking devices over the past four years and the number of car thefts in the province has been cut in half since 2001.

But Bob Kary, executive director of Saskatchewan's young offenders programs, says it's not only because of the bracelets — the trick is to work with the young people, too.

"To sit down with young people and their families and come up with a program that will keep track of them and deal with the issues that are leading to the offending in the first place," he said.

And while electronic monitoring can work for some offenders, it's not for everyone, Kary warned.

"They need to be at home at a certain time. They need to not tamper with the electronics. They need to be able to have a certain amount of discipline, and that takes some maturity and that takes some willfulness.

"So, for example, some young people with cognitive disabilities, such as [Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder] may not be able to manage that system very well. They would simply fail rather quickly."

Part of a larger strategy

Manitoba Justice officials said the GPS tracking would be part of a comprehensive strategy and would not serve as a substitute for existing resources to reduce theft volumes.

Justice officials already contact high-risk auto thieves every three hours with at least one in-person visit every day, seven days a week, as part of a two-year-old partnership between Manitoba Justice and Manitoba Public Insurance.

The provincial government also announced in March that it would provide $500,000 for the city of Winnipeg to add five officers to its stolen auto unit, allowing it to operate seven days a week.