Licence variation
Last week (27 February 2025), the MoJ published a process evaluation of the electronic monitoring as licence variation project. The project began as a pilot during August 2022 in the East Midlands probation region before being extended to another four regions.
The intervention entails the discretionary use of EM by probation practitioners in relation to prison leavers whose behaviour is seen to be deteriorating and where the additional use of EM is determined to be a proportionate and necessary response.
The subjects must be adults who were released on licence from a standard determinate custodial sentence of any duration for any offence type. The additional use of EM for up to 12 months is enforced through a variation of the prison leaver’s licence conditions.
The process evaluation report contains qualitative conclusions about stakeholders’ perceptions about what has worked well and less well in the EM as LV project. There is also a quantitative summary of the available management information for the period up to December 2023.
Findings
The evaluation reports on 506 uses of electronic monitoring (EM) as a licence variation between 8 August 2022 and 31 December 2023. Interestingly, most of these happened very soon post-release – the average number of days between the date of release and the date of the valid EM as LV order start was 50. The median number of days was 31.
In terms of EM as LV order starts for which there were dates of tag installation and removal recorded, the average tagging duration was 71 days. The median tagging duration was 61 days. You can see more information in the chart I have reproduced below.
A majority of EM as LV order starts was associated with a “high” risk of serious harm with regard to future reoffending. In contrast, the most common risk of serious harm among all prison leavers released on an adult licence over the same time period was “medium”.
Almost all people subject to EM as LV were male; most were likely to be 25–34 years old; mostly of white ethnicity; mostly had no religion; mostly heterosexual; and nearly all of British nationality.
Perceptions of the pilot
Probation practitioners, people on probation and EM service providers generally held a positive perception of the EM as LV project. This was mainly because it was seen to allow probation practitioners to help manage people on probation in the community when their risk was escalating. Moreover, it was felt that the intervention allowed people on probation the opportunity to show that they were compliant with other licence conditions and that it was an effective alternative to recall when they responded well to the intervention. Many probation practitioners described the tool as a “last chance” before recall to prison.
Despite positive perceptions of the tool, there were many perceived barriers to use, including resource constraints, poor communication between stakeholders and a lack of awareness of the underlying guidance or process for implementation.
The views of people on probation
Respondents conveyed that being tagged after release provided them an opportunity to prove that they could comply with their licence conditions. However, there were some concerns expressed about the accuracy of the location monitoring function, where it was claimed that the EM tag would indicate they had been to locations that they had not visited.
Some respondents said that having an EM tag negatively affected relationships with family and friends, as well as causing some adverse effects on their mental wellbeing. They also said that the size of the tag caused them discomfort, and they felt it drew attention and judgement when they were doing day-to-day activities.
The views of probation practitioners
EM as LV was mainly used as a response to the person on probation’s observed escalation in risk, for example, after testing positive in drug tests, contact being made with people precluded by their licence, failure to attend probation meetings, etc. It was considered that the use of location and/or curfew monitoring allowed probation practitioners to aid decision making as to whether the person on probation could be safely managed in the community.
Some probation practitioners explained that they would use EM as LV more if they were able to track the live location of a person on probation using an internal IT system, instead of being limited to a maximum of seven days of data upon request from EM service providers.
They also generally commented that their relationship with EM service providers was poor, with reported delays in communication as well as reported delays to installing tags on people enrolled in the EM as LV project.
Conclusion
My initial conclusion is that using tagging instead of a prison recall is potentially a positive initiative, provided that it does not end up meaning that an even greater proportion of people are released with tags as a standard licence condition. We must wait for the promised impact and economic evaluations to see whether EM as LV can reduce recall and reconviction rates and whether it is affordable in the current economic climate.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
