Finally, some good news for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – tagging works! Last week, the prisons minister was unleashed to proclaim that the latest data on electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders not in custody shows the concept works. Well, up to a point, Lord Timpson.
A study of 3,600 offenders on tagging orders has reportedly shown a statistically significant reduction in their rates of reoffending compared with non-tagged prison leavers. It fell from 33 per cent to 26 per cent, which is not bad for government work. We should be grateful that giving ankle tags to offenders means only a quarter of them will go on to commit burglaries, thefts or robberies. There is, of course, a zero-risk baseline to compare this ‘progress’ against – incarceration.
Prisons are full to bursting, running red hot in terms of occupancy, violence and drug misuse
So we need to be clear about this munificent gift from the powers that be: it is driven by cold logistical necessity, not altruism. Tagging is a cornerstone of both the emergency mass release of prisoners and the longer-term Labour strategy to get us out of a hole.
Prisons are full to bursting, running red hot in terms of occupancy, violence and drug misuse. There is simply not enough room to house everyone that a judge or magistrate directs should be in custody. We can’t build our way out of the problem for now, if ever, so the risk must be transferred from the jail landing to the community.
Tagging is a much more cost-effective way of managing risk but it certainly does not eliminate it. Though this pilot study reports promising results, there are many more research findings which are much less bullish about the deterrent effect of tagging. The Probation Inspectorate has found that EM has a ‘mixed impact’ on long-term criminal behaviour. It cited a meta-study of 17 studies on EM that found ‘no statistically significant effect on reducing reoffending’ when this was compared against time in custody. It emphasised the fact that EM can only be effective if combined with other tailored interventions in the community. Those programmes have to come from a probation service already crippled by ministerial expectations on emergency mass release of prisoners, with only one region in England not rated either ‘inadequate’ or ‘requiring improvement.’
Still, let’s try to be positive. There are very many people in custody who are only made worse by it and whose crimes are not violent. These may be ideal for forms of electronic surveillance in the community where curfews can be enforced, exclusion zones created and even sobriety monitored. Other forms of biodata which can be collected by body-worn devices may have specific uses in monitoring convicted terrorists on licence. EM does play a role but only if dictated by risk, not logistics, and only if there is meaningful additional support to encourage desistance from a criminal lifestyle. That needs boots on the ground in communities that simply aren’t available.
The mass expansion of electronic monitoring will happen, though, and this very limited pilot study will be leant on heavily to support the rollout. Deals have already been cut with monitoring companies like Serco, who hold a £200 million contract to deliver EM until 2030 having also been fined £19.2 million after an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into their handling of a previous contract. Serco were criticised for their part in failing to fit tags to ‘hundreds’ of offenders released early after Labour threw open the prison gates to prevent system gridlock last year. The MoJ refused to disclose how many of these offenders were domestic violence perpetrators. Putting such people under house arrest even if the tags are fitted has obvious and chilling risks.
Tagging is only held as superior to incarceration because there’s no room or capacity to do anything else with offenders. And while the cost is immeasurably less than banging someone up for 23 hours a day in a cell, there’s plenty of evidence that additional costs will be piled on the police, who aren’t exactly lost for something to do these days.
Back in May, the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley complained that the MoJ had done no analysis on workload implications for the police of an influx of offenders who would otherwise be in prison. ‘Every time you put an offender into the community, a proportion of them will commit crime, a proportion of them will need chasing down by the police,’ he said.
A record 20,000 offenders are now serving their sentence in the community wearing tags, which the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has described as ‘the holy grail’ for solving our custody crisis. By the pilot study’s own maths, around 5,000 of them will commit further offences while being ‘monitored’. That’s a lot of risk to be managed politically and a lot of new victims in the pipeline.
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