Findings

The headline finding is a big (9%) increase in the year-on-year number of people subject to tagging. Between 31 March 2021 and 31 March 2022, the number of individuals actively monitored increased. For most of the year the numbers of individuals actively monitored remained broadly stable, at around 14,000 people. However. from the middle of 2021/22 however the caseload began to increase, and has now reversed the decreasing trend seen between 2015 and 2020. This increase was driven by extensions to the use of location (GPS) monitoring tags for new offender cohorts, particularly its use for immigration bail, as well as the roll-out of alcohol monitoring tags.

The data is slightly complicated because one person may be given several tagging orders at the same time and/or over the course of a year. Therefore there will be more active orders at any one time than there are people being monitored.

The breakdown of the figures is interesting to see with different trends at work:

• Court bail orders make up the largest proportion of electronic monitoring device orders for individuals on the caseload (39% of the caseload). At 31 March 2022, 5,662 individuals had court bail as their first order, down by 6% on the previous year.
• Court sentences (community orders and suspended sentence orders) was the second largest group with 4,129 individuals (29% of the caseload), this number fell by a very substantial 18% on the same point in the previous year.
• Post release was the third largest group with 3,144 individuals (22% of the caseload), rising by 22% when compared with the previous year.
• Immigration order type increased, with 1,440 individuals (10% of the caseload).

Interestingly, the number of people subjected to the two most common categories of electronic tagging – bail and court orders – fell substantially. However, this fall was offset by the increase in the number of people being released from prison with a tag and the number of people on immigration orders required to wear one. It seems almost definite that the increase of tagging for people released from prison will result in yet another increase in the numbers recalled to prison.

Alcohol abstinence monitoring requirements

The other big increase was in the number of alcohol monitoring orders, all of which require people to wear a tag. There were 3,621 alcohol monitoring orders imposed across England and Wales last year, a large increase from the 123 seen in the year ending March 2021. This primarily reflects the roll-out nationally of alcohol monitoring as a sentencing option. Correspondingly the number of individuals with an alcohol monitoring tag increased from 36 as at 31 March 2021 to 900 a year later.

At the end of March this year, the compliance rate of those fitted with an alcohol tag was 97.2%. Compliance with alcohol monitoring is a cumulative measure, calculated as the total number of days in which the tag has not generated a tamper or alcohol alert divided by the total number of days the tag was fitted, since alcohol tags were introduced in October 2020. In other words, alcohol monitoring tags seem to be effective in preventing people drinking, at least in the short term.

Conclusion

The Ministry of Justice has continuously talked about its expansion of GPS tagging in particular and it may be that this year sees the first substantial increase in its use. It will be interesting to see how many people breach these orders and end up in custody instead.

Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here.