Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people breached tagging orders by curfew type in each year since 2018.

Data showing the number of defendants and offenders given new electronically monitored orders by cohort and in total, since April 2017, is available in Table 1.2 of the Data Tables accompanying the most recent Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electronic-monitoring-statistics-publication-march-2024.

The department is currently unable to provide data on the number of individuals who have breached an order each year since 2018 due to non-compliance with an electronically monitored curfew because it is not held.

Courts will decide whether a defendant (for court bail) or, in some cases, an offender serving a community sentence (community order, suspended sentence order, youth rehabilitation order) are in breach of an order that includes electronically monitored compliance with a condition or requirement. In determining whether a breach or the order has occurred they may take into account a number of factors, not exclusively the electronically monitored requirement. Therefore, we are unable to reliably collect data identifying the reason for breach in some of these cases and whether this was exclusively as a result of non-compliance with a curfew requirement.

Similarly, for offenders on post-custody licence, where probation is alerted to a non-compliance with an electronically monitored condition of their licence, they may consider a number of factors, including a reasonable excuse, such as a hospital admission, and whether there is a risk to the public indicated by additional factors. Therefore, when a decision is made to recall an offender to custody for a breach of licence conditions, the electronically monitored condition may be just one factor.