Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 11 November 2024 to Question HL2063 on Prisoners' Release: Electronic Tagging, for what reason all SDS40 releases were not tagged before leaving prison.

This Government inherited a criminal justice system on the brink of collapse, and as a result was forced to introduce the emergency SDS40 scheme which allows some individuals to be released 40% of the way through their custodial sentence rather than at 50%. Anyone released under SDS40 is subject to strict licence conditions, which can include electronic monitoring or curfews, and face being recalled to prison should they breach these conditions.

Serco had a backlog of visits to install tags and we were clear that their performance is currently below acceptable levels. We are having regular meetings to hold them to account and already imposing financial penalties given their performance to date and won’t hesitate to trigger relevant contractual penalties if they do not improve. Serco has prioritised the SDS40 releases requiring electronic monitoring and performance on the tranche 2 caseload was much improved. As of Monday 4 November, all visits to install tags for SDS40 cases had been completed. Where a tag was not fitted, a non-compliance notification was set to Probation to consider enforcement action.