Electronic parole officers to check young offenders

The Home Office has signed up biometrics specialists Nuance as part of a £45m deal to track young offenders.

Nuance will provide voice recognition technology, which will automatically call offenders at pre-set times and verify their voices over the telephone.

The system is being used by the Youth Justice Board under a scheme called the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme which aims to stop offending by ensuring offenders stay at home or work at specified times.

The voice recognition software is a central part of the plan, allowing tracking of offenders to be combined with ensuring they are present for training, education or employment sessions.

It will be used against the more serious young offenders who are close to being given a custodial sentence. Andy Homer, assistant director at Premier Monitoring Services - the firm overseeing the contract, said: "This system is a way of monitoring closely young offenders and ensuring they are in the right places at the right time."

Nuance claims the software eliminates the risk of impersonation, even on poor quality phone lines, with the chance of a mistake at less than 1 in 10,000.

Nuance's software works by modelling the vocal tract of users after taking samples of their speech. It then compares this database against the voice of the speaker to be verified.