Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of his Department's contract with Serco for electronic monitoring on the (a) physical and (b) mental wellbeing of people who will be monitored; and what estimate he has made of the number of people monitored under that contract.

Answered by Gareth Bacon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The priority when it comes to electronic monitoring is public protection, hence why they can be accompanied by tough curfews and exclusion zones. However, Serco’s health and safety policy ensures that the physical and mental wellbeing of those subject to electronic monitoring is also regarded. Serco will conduct wellbeing visits, direct those with an electronic monitoring requirement to organisations offering advice and support where necessary and pay due regard to an individual’s health considerations during the installation of equipment and subsequent monitoring of requirements. Serco’s approach was assessed in their tender response and their performance of this will be assessed and reviewed as part of overall contract management.

We have made sufficient funds available to increase the number of defendants and offenders subject to electronic monitoring at any one time to 25,000 by March 2025. This includes doubling the number of GPS tags available to courts for community orders and suspended sentences to support robust community sentences and supervision.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the finding in the report of the National Audit Office on Electronic monitoring – a progress update, HC 62 of Session 2022-23, published on 8 June 2022, that HMPPS is not providing stakeholders with location monitoring data in line with its original aims, limiting its added value for supervising offenders and protecting the public, whether his Department is taking steps to address that issue.

Answered by Kit Malthouse

In 2021, HMPPS took a decision to cancel the development of a new Electronic Monitoring case management system and stakeholder portal because the project was late and over budget. This left stakeholders without access to GPS tag-generated location monitoring data in line with the Department’s original aims. HMPPS have developed new reporting tools for location monitoring which will address many of the data reporting features that were to form part of the capability of the cancelled investment of the user portal for electronic monitoring information. The NAO reports states that the optimal decision was made to cancel the investment and we have identified innovative, alternative ways to deliver the planned benefits.

Acquisitive crime offenders:

Probation practitioners can access a portal that provides location monitoring data for people on probation in this cohort. This tool is currently available in 19 police force areas. This provides direct access to trail monitoring data, and for instance enables them to plot points of interest such as premises where alcohol is available.

Participating police force areas receive crime mapping reports showing any qualified matches against crime data submitted by the force. Forces can make additional requests for information on acquisitive crime tags.

Other GPS tagged offenders:

Probation practitioners can request trail monitoring data for anyone on a GPS tag.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of further increasing the number of convicted offenders subject to electronic tagging.

Answered by Kit Malthouse

Electronic Monitoring is an effective criminal justice tool helping probation and police reduce crime, bringing rigour and accountability to supervision, whilst keeping the public safe. For convicted offenders it can be targeted to support rehabilitation, public protection, crime reduction and reparation.

We are investing £183m in tagging over the next three years, nearly doubling the number of people tagged by 2025. This includes an Innovation Fund to test different ways of using existing technology to cut crime and foster the development of new types of tags.

We have expanded our world first Acquisitive Crime Project, it now covers almost half the country and we have undertaken to publish findings from the project evaluation.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to his Department's press release entitled, Tens of thousands more criminals to be tagged to cut crime and protect victims, published on 5 October 2021, what assessment he has made of the potential impact on (a) probation service workloads and (b) recall numbers of planned increases in the use of electronic monitoring.

Answered by Kit Malthouse

The targeted expansion of electronic monitoring will allow us to assess the impact of specific electronic monitoring measures to inform ongoing and future use. Published alongside the legislation for the Acquisitive Crime project that imposes electronic monitoring on burglars, robbers and thieves is the Impact Assessment in which we have estimated the impact on probation and recall: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/999/impacts This project is being evaluated and findings will be published.