Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of (a) GPS and (b) alcohol monitoring tags in operation.

The Ministry of Justice has an ambitious programme in place to expand the use of electronic monitoring, as well as building the evidence base for the effective future use of the technologies in helping to protect the public and reduce reoffending.

Our latest published data shows at 31 March 2024 the total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device was 20,084, a 16% increase over the previous 12 months and exceeding 20,000 for the first time. Of this total, 10,031 individuals were wearing a GPS tag, a 36% increase over the previous 12 months, and 2,862 were wearing an alcohol monitoring tag, a 27% increase over the same period.

While defendants on court bail make up the largest proportion of electronically monitored individuals, the fastest growing cohort over the 12 months to 31 March 2024 was offenders serving post-custody licences. The Ministry of Justice has focused expansion activity on this cohort, providing probation officers with an additional tool to help support robust offender management by providing certainty of detection of non-compliance with licence conditions. The four expansion projects in the post-custody cohort target prison leavers with risk linked to alcohol, domestic abuse and acquisitive offending, as well as those whose risk increases while they are in the community. Each expansion project is subject to a robust evaluation which will help to inform whether, where and how we continue to expand the use of electronic monitoring.

In addition to our expansion projects, the department has a programme of stakeholder engagement with decision makers to raise awareness of the availability and functionality of electronically monitored conditions and requirements as an alternative to custody where appropriate. In October 2023, the Lord Chancellor announced the doubling of GPS tags available to the courts for community orders and suspended sentence orders to support tough community-based sentences. In August 2023 we published the ‘Electronic Monitoring Court Bail Protocol' for England and Wales which sets out key information for those involved in imposing and managing electronically monitored conditions of court bail to help build stakeholder confidence in the delivery of electronic monitoring, including GPS tags.