Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether all offenders on the Home Detention Curfew scheme are required to wear a tag 24 hours a day.

Home Detention Curfew (HDC) is a robust scheme which allows prisoners to be released early and work towards rehabilitation in the community, while remaining subject to strict conditions. If they breach these, they can be returned to custody.

It is not possible to provide the average daily number of offenders on HDC without incurring disproportionate costs. However, to give an indication, the table attached provides the number of offenders on HDC each week for the last 12 months. This is taken from the prison population statistics, which are published weekly and can be found on Gov.uk

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/prison-population-statistics

All offenders released on HDC are required to wear a tag for 24 hours a day. They are subject to a curfew, which is electronically monitored through the tag. Legislation requires that the curfew period(s) must not total less than nine hours during any one day, but the general expectation is that the curfew should be set for 12 hours a day.