Just follow all the rules, they say

The notification requirements aren’t the problem. Cutting ourselves off from all our friends and accepting no invitations, lest my husband’s conviction should tar their lives in any way, isn’t the problem. Coordinating every aspect of our lives to be beyond reproach, that’s not the problem. Regular visits by police, registering new devices and holidays, the very probing questions, all no problem. If you can show me where the bar is, how high up the hoops are, I can jump through them.

My husband committed a crime seven years ago and was convicted four years ago. I do not begrudge the fact that society places checks on people who might be a threat; wouldn’t have it any other way. Every night, before we go to bed, I tidy the space, fluff the pillows, look at the rooms like a stranger might. In my mind, a single unwashed glass, a can of soft drink or a balled up tissue might make us look like… people who are a mess, in a metaphorical sense. When you are expecting that two police officers are going to push over the threshold at any moment, you learn to run a tight ship. It’s the price we pay for his transgression, and that’s okay.

What comes as a gut punch, again and again, are the bits we don’t see coming. That which ever police officer is in charge of an offender gets to make the call what is okay and what isn’t; that rules get to be made up on the fly. "That will be for the judge to decide," they say when we read from the statute, the SHPO, the requirements and the wording contradicts the new allegation of non-compliance.

My husband has always been an Apple user, has tracking software on his devices and has handed them over on request many, many times. Never a single problem. Then we moved to Scotland earlier this year. On their first visit to our home, the police arrested him and let him stay in a cold cell overnight – made all out of glass with the lights on all night – to await a hearing in front of a judge the next day. Why? He uses Safari as his browser.

After four years of being managed and having his devices supervised by police, a new police force doesn’t like his browser – the standard browser on all Apple devices.

At the hearing, the procurator fiscal called him a “transient” with “considerable wealth” and wanted to keep him in custody until his trial for this reason. “Transient” because he has had three addresses in the four years since his conviction and has gone on holiday abroad twice a year – for around a week each time. And our “considerable wealth”? A pension account he won’t have access to for decades to come… Thanks to a very hard-working lawyer, he was released on bail on the condition he surrenders his passport.

There is nothing in the legislation that Safari is not permissible and in four years, no police officer ever had an issue with the browser. Meanwhile, our legal costs are in four figures and how do you explain to your boss that you simply disappear during a workday? And how do you return to your Zoom meetings when you still smell like the court’s holding cell?

Still with the cloud of the upcoming trial hanging over us, we have gone on holiday – in the UK, naturally. Today, we got a visit by the local force. They were asked by Police Scotland to visit us. My husband will probably be arrested when we get home. The claim hanging in the air is a breach of the notification requirements. I cried - which I have never done in front of police. I explained that we triple checked the statute, were sure that we were compliant. They were very nice, said they would send a report back to Scotland that we were welcoming, forthcoming and open. But there was nothing they could do. It was up to police Scotland to decide what the rules were.

I emailed the officer, copied and pasted in the exact wording of the statute, and the exact wording of the guidance from the Home Office. The requirements are very clear, and we are not in breach. I asked her in an overly cheery manner whether she wouldn’t be so kind as to include in her report that we familiarised ourselves with the legislation and acted accordingly. She says she will. And when we go home, we will expect the knock again.

Last time, they asked whether cuffs would be necessary, but this time, they might not be so accommodating.

More legal costs. More unexplainable absences from work. More heartache.

Until the next surprise.