Electronic Monitoring of Offenders

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a typically thoughtful question. Obviously, all these matters are kept under review. We work very closely with the Probation Service, which uses a range of measures to manage offenders once they are released into the community, to both support them to reintegrate and to ensure that the public are safe, and we also work very closely with the police on that. When an offender does find settled accommodation, a tag can then be put on as part of their licence conditions, but where there are concerns, the recall option remains available.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

When Pentonville Prison was built in 1842, I do not imagine anybody expected that today it would have twice the number of prisoners the Victorians thought ought to be kept there. Furthermore, Pentonville Prison is a London remand prison—people used to be there for six to eight months on remand in pretty terrible conditions, but now they are there for years because of the crisis in the criminal justice system. The question is this: when they are released, what should be done with them? I was speaking to the governor of the prison on Friday, and he said that if the Government wished them to, prison officers would be quite happy to be trained to put the tags on people themselves before releasing them.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her thoughtful question. Like me, she has the greatest regard for our prison governors. They work on the frontline, keeping the public safe and keeping their prisons running, and they do come up with a lot of good ideas, many of which I have heard myself. I meet governors regularly about what we can do to improve matters; I am very much “ear to the ground.” Indeed, many of the proposals that we are taking forward to improve significantly on the situation we inherited come from the very practical reality that prison governors encounter, so I thank her for the suggestion.