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). The aim of these systems is to support probation in supervising people so that they don’t reoffend.
If probation becomes overwhelmed, we will likely see crime and recalls to prison rising
It’s important to understand that tags don’t manage offenders. HDC is usually used at the end of a prison sentence for lower-risk offenders, who spend up to six months on a curfew at home. Between August and December 2021, I was on HDC. This meant I had to wear a chunky ankle tag all day, which would communicate with a ‘base station’ in my house. If I wasn’t at home between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., the base station was supposed to contact Electronic Monitoring Services (EMS), the outsourced tagging provider. Then, in theory, they would alert probation.
I never breached my curfew, but I am aware of numerous cases where curfew breaches have not been communicated to probation officers. Similarly, GPS tags don’t provide live location information to those supervising the offender. Instead, they report historic movements, meaning that it may be possible to only punish a domestic abuser after they’ve visited their victim.
Even worse, Serco, the outsourcing company which has operated the EMS contract since last spring, has often proved unable to tag people. First, in September of last year, I discovered that people who should have had tags fitted on the day of their release from prison had been free for weeks with no contact by EMS. Although there have been efforts to blame this backlog on the mass early release scheme, a number of the people I spoke with had been released before it came into effect. There have also been backlogs of weeks in fitting sobriety tags.
It’s very hard to understand how Serco will cope with this vastly increased workload. I asked the Ministry of Justice if these new tags would be Serco’s responsibility or if they’d be tendering for a new supplier. They declined to comment.
The other great challenge is what this means for probation. At a press conference last week, the Lord Chancellor mentioned that probation has beaten their target of hiring 1,000 new trainees by March 2025. While this is true, in the past year 601 experienced probation officers left the service and the organisation has a shortfall of about 20 per cent compared to its ‘target staffing level’. This is before the massive increase in work for the probation service, as earlier releases and a greater reliance on community sentences drive up their caseload. If probation becomes overwhelmed, then we will likely see crime and recalls to prison rising.
In fairness to the government, I know they are absolutely aware of the need to fix probation – and fast. They believe that technology may save the day, with better automation and smoother processes allowing individual probation officers to manage more cases. The ultimate goal is a phrase I have heard from senior officials and people in government is ‘prison outside of prison’ – as system under which people can be securely managed in their homes via technology.
The problem is that many of these people have very complex and unstable lives. They often struggle with substance abuse issues, and many have rarely been in work. They are not simple to supervise, and all this technology can only be a tool for capable probation staff.
The Gauke review is ambitious. In an ideal world we would have years to test and deploy technology, increase staff numbers in probation, and ensure prisons are ready for the new model. Unfortunately, there is no time. The jails will soon be full again, so the government will need to hope that Serco ups its game and that probation staff are able to cope. Otherwise, we may see thousands of unsupervised people reoffending, filling the prisons and destroying public support for fixing the justice system. For all our sakes, we should hope this works.
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