Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people serving suspended sentences were made subject to an electronic monitoring condition, broken down by offence; and on how many occasions was that condition breached in each of the last five years.

Electronic Monitoring (EM), both of curfews and using satellite enabled tags to monitor an individual’s whereabouts, is a vital tool in protecting the public and robustly monitoring offenders in the community. It supports probation staff and the police in managing offenders and defendants safely in the community, delivering the orders of the court and helping to tackle the problems which lead to offending.

The below table shows the number of suspended sentence orders with an EM requirement by offence type. Data is only available from 2016.

Summary motoringÈ

Violence against the personÈNon-compliance of ordersÈFailed Bail condition È

Failed Bail condition È

The below table shows the number of tagged subjects who failed to comply with their suspended sentence order electronic monitoring requirement at least once. Data on compliance is only available for completed suspended sentence orders.

2016/17(3) 2017/18 2018/19

Total completed suspended sentence orders with an electronic monitoring requirement with equip install(2)(3) 7421 8193 6430

Compliance 2585 3040 2666

Non-compliance 4836 5153 3764

(1) Derived from electronic monitoring new starts files

(2) Derived from number of completions of orders with equipment on

(3) Electronic monitoring completions data only available from June 2016 onwards. A person may have more than one completion.

Some orders are for multiple offences, in these cases orders have been assigned to first offence type recorded on the orders.

Note for reference: Failed bail conditions = not surrendering to bail, and non-compliance of orders = BREACH OF ACTION PLAN ORDER, Breach of Criminal Behaviour Order, Breach of Restraining order, Failure to attend supervision appointments, Failure to comply with Notification Requirements, FAILURE TO NOTIFY OF CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES etc.

If a subject on tag does not comply with an Electronic Monitoring condition or requirement, for example by being absent during curfew hours or tampering with a tag, an instantaneous alert is generated that is sent to Electronic Monitoring Services (EMS). The appropriate authorities decide, based on the evidence, whether the non-compliance event constitutes a breach and if so what action should be taken. The nature of breaches vary, and not all non-compliance events are classed as formal breaches requiring further action – for example, if the subject was at hospital or in custody at the time, and therefore unable to return to their curfew location in time for their curfew. While the majority of non-compliance events will generate an alert than can lead to a breach there are a range of other circumstances that can lead to breach action being taken.