Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government, since the general election, what (1) number, and (2) proportion, of prisoners released early have been electronically tagged; and what assessment has been made by the Ministry of Justice and its arm's-length bodies as to whether Serco has had sufficient capacity to tag all the prisoners who it was originally deemed should be tagged.

Data on SDS40 releases forms a subset of data intended for future publication. The number of prison places projected to be saved by SDS40 releases are set out in the Impact Assessment (between 4,600 and 5,900 prison places for the male estate).

Serco had sufficient capacity in terms of both equipment levels and resources to tag all those being released from custody with an Electronic Monitoring requirement under this scheme. As with all releases from custody, prior notification was issued to Serco with licence notification paperwork to identify numbers and locations of those requiring tagging.

By 04 November, all required visits to attempt tag installation for SDS40 cases had been made.