David Gauke’s sentencing review, which will report this week, is going to be far bolder than anyone expected. Today it has been reported that the Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood has secured £700 million of funding from the Treasury to buy 30,000 more electronic ‘tags’ which will be used to curfew people at home, track their alcohol and drug usage, and log where they have been. This will be a huge expansion of the tagging system, which currently oversees about 20,000 people. Given that the system is already struggling, it’s hard not to be sceptical about this announcement.
At present, about 11,000 tag-wearers are people on bail, or immigration offenders, while the other 9,000 are wearing a tag as part of their sentence for a crime. This may be home detention curfew (HDC), a ‘sobriety tag’ (to measure alcohol consumption) or a GPS tag (for offenders who aren’t allowed in certain places – often used for domestic abusers).
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