UK Children's Secretary, Mr. Ed Balls, has unveiled plans to spend £400million of taxpayers money putting "the worst families in England" in "sin bins" (which is now the technical term for 24-hour CCTV surveillance and supervision). Interestingly, Mr. Balls is not even innovating here - turns out from this news story that this is already standard practice in the UK - he simply wants to increase funding to the program.
UPDATE: So I did some research on this fascinating story. Turns out the Home Office has a website where you can read all about the sin bin program, which is dubbed the "Family Intervention Project." Here's an excerpt from the website:
"A contract (also known as a behaviour support agreement) is drawn up between the family and key worker which sets out the changes that are expected, the support that will be provided in order to facilitate that change and the consequences if changes are not made, or tasks are not undertaken.
The use of sanctions is an important lever for motivating families to change. Demoting tenancies or gaining possession orders suspended on the basis of compliance with the projects or, for some, the very real prospect of children being taken into care, can provide the wake up call to take the help on offer. Too often these families have been told that action will be taken but is then not followed through, creating a sense among family members that they are untouchable."
Nice.
