An ankle bracelet designed to enforce drinking bans imposed by the courts is being tried out in the Netherlands from Monday.

The device works by constantly monitoring the percentage of alcohol in sweat, allowing it to detect if the user has recently had a drink.

The trial will involve a group of 100 convicted criminals in Rotterdam and the east of the country who have recently been given alcohol bans as part of their sentence. Around 500 bans are imposed a year in connection with offences such as domestic violence and drink-driving.

Alcohol is reckoned to be a factor in between 25% and 50% of violent crimes and the justice ministry estimates the social cost of alcohol abuse to be around €3 billion a year.

The devices have been successfully introduced in the US and the UK, where 78% and 92% of users respectively have completed their sentences without breaching the control order.

‘A lot of criminal cases result in an alcohol restriction, particularly violent crime,’ senior state prosecutor Kitty Nooy told NOS. ‘The public prosecution service wants to know if this is a suitable way of monitoring alcohol bans.’