Offenders: Electronic Tagging

(asked on 20th June 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people with a community order were made subject to an electronic monitoring condition; and on how many occasions was that condition breached in each of the last five years.


Answered by
Robert Buckland Portrait
Robert Buckland
This question was answered on 5th July 2019

Electronic Monitoring (EM) is a vital tool in protecting the public and robustly monitoring offenders in the community. It supports probation staff and the police in managing offenders and defendants safely in the community, delivering the orders of the court and helping them tackle the problems which lead to offending.

The table below shows the total number of people in each year subject to EM as a requirement of a Community Order.(1) Data is only available from June 2016 onwards.

2016/17

2017/18

Number of people in England and Wales with Community Orders with EM equipment installed(2)

18,081

16,098

Data on compliance is only available for completed Community Orders. The table below shows how many Community Orders with EM were completed in each year, and in how many of these a tagged subject failed to comply with their EM requirement at least once. Please note that these figures concern the monitoring of curfew requirements only, not GPS location monitoring requirements.

2016/17

2017/18

Total completed Community Orders with EM equipment installed(2)(3)

15,547

15,987

Compliance

6,065

6,645

Non-compliance

9,482

9,342

(1) The figures provided in these tables do not include data from the GPS pilot, which commenced in October 2016 and completed in March 2018. A total of 17 tags were issued to individuals as part of a Community Order during the Pilot. An independent qualitative process evaluation of the GPS location monitoring pilot was published in February 2019: ‘Process evaluation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) Electronic Monitoring Pilot - Qualitative findings’: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/process-evaluation-of-the-global-positioning-system-gps-electronic-monitoring-pilot. A quantitative process evaluation of the GPS Pilot containing analysis of Management Information gathered over the course of the pilot is currently undergoing quality assurance and being finalised. This will include information on compliance.

(2) Derived from caseload files with equipment on (3) Derived from number of completions of Community Orders with equipment on (4) A person may have more than one completion. Figures after March 2018 will be published in the HMPPS Digest in July 2019.

If a subject on tag does not comply with an Electronic Monitoring condition or requirement, for example by being absent during curfew hours or tampering with a tag, an instantaneous alert is generated that is sent to Electronic Monitoring Services (EMS). The appropriate authorities decide, based on the evidence, whether the non-compliance event constitutes a breach and if so what action should be taken. The nature of breaches vary, and not all non-compliance events are classed as formal breaches requiring further action – for example, if the subject was at hospital or in custody at the time, and therefore unable to return to their curfew location in time for their curfew. While the majority of non-compliance events will generate an alert than can lead to a breach there are a range of other circumstances that can lead to breach action being taken

Reticulating Splines