The electronic tagging system that will be relied upon to monitor thousands of offenders released early from prison is failing to alert the authorities of potential breaches of conditions, a watchdog has warned.
Martin Jones, HM inspector of probation in England and Wales, said the current system relied upon hard-pressed police and probation officers looking up individual cases and then deciding whether potential breaches need to be investigated further.
He said it needed to be updated to send alerts to the authorities if a former inmate breached an exclusion zone that they were banned from.
His demand comes after the government announced that up to ۵,۰۰۰ prisoners would be released from ۱ October to ease the prison overcrowding crisis. At present, there are ۸۶,۵۰۰ people behind bars with ۲,۴۰۰ spare places.
Andy Burnham paused the scheme last month and on Tuesday announced plans to exclude prisoners guilty of rape, serious child sexual abuse offences and grooming, reducing the number of releases by ۱,۰۰۰. Killers and domestic abusers will still be eligible for early release, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.
The prime minister has assured the public that offenders will face tighter community supervision, including new GPS monitoring for rapists to restrict their movements.
In an interview with the Guardian, Jones said he had recently launched an inspection of offender tagging, and had seen that the system was coming under strain and needed to be upgraded to “minimise the risk to the public”.
“Some of the systems are pretty clunky and it’s far too reliant on people looking for the information rather than the information being fed or pushed to practitioners as a matter of course.
“Tagging has potential to improve public perception of victims’ safety. But only if it used properly and if there is a wider system and enough staff to support that. If not, there is a risk that you give false assurances to the public,” he said.
The number of people in England and Wales being electronically monitored has doubled to ۲۸,۷۰۰ in five years, and is estimated to rise to ۲۲,۰۰۰ newly tagged each year from ۲۰۲۷. Jones said this expansion needed a huge increase in staff to monitor offenders.
“My concern is this: have the processes and the system kept apace with the number of people being tagged? Because ultimately all tagging gives you is information about where somebody is at a particular point in time. You are relying on having sufficient police officers and probation officers to look at that information and make a decision about how it informs your picture on the activities of that individual,” he said.
Last month, the National Audit Office found that the rapid expansion of electronic tagging to reduce pressure on prisons would put public safety at risk without robust improvements.
Among its concerns, the report highlighted poor early performance from one external contractor, Serco. Between August ۲۰۲۴ and July ۲۰۲۵, individuals were not tagged on time and officials were not notified of potential breaches in a timely manner, though performance was said to have since improved.
Jones also called for the government to ensure that there were enough staff in approved premises, which are hostels set up to monitor ۲,۰۰۰ of the most serious offenders when they are initially released from prison.
“Our research shows that approved premises work. [They] are extremely effective at managing people after their initial release from custody. What a missed opportunity if those premises cannot remain open because of our insufficient staff,” he said.
Jones welcomed the fact that the government had put back the early release of the initial ۷۰۰ prisoners from ۲ September to October and said he hoped that uncertainty over the policy was now over.
“I have been very anxious about the readiness of the Probation Service, particularly when the government introduced the SDS ۴۰ [early release] scheme,” he said.
“Now there have been improvements. I think they have got approximately an additional ۱,۰۰۰ probation officers and probation staff in post compared to where it was a couple of years ago. And I think that puts them in a stronger position. But the bottom line is we have a system which for a number of years now has been moving pressure from prisons into the community. What we now need is a sustained period of investment, and stabilisation.”
