New criminal tagging system is five years late

A NEW tagging system for criminals is running at least five years behind schedule after a catalogue of failings by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), a spending watchdog has warned.

The assessment by the National Audit Office (NAO) also found there was limited evidence that electronic monitoring actually reduced reoffending.

It concluded that the MOJ failed to achieve value for money in its management of the scheme, which was launched six years ago and will have cost an estimated £130 million by 202425. The service itself is expected to cost £470 million between 2017-18 and 2024-25.

Since 1999, the Government has used contracted-out electronic monitoring, or “tagging”, services for the sentencing and supervision of offenders. The regime is used by police, courts or probation services to monitor offenders’ locations and compliance with home curfews.

In 2011, the MOJ launched a programme to develop a new “world-leading” ankle tag that combined radio frequency and GPS technology.

“The Ministry assumed there would be high demand for location monitoring from those who sentence offenders but did not run a pilot to test this before launching the programme,” the review said. “It also did not understand the potential financial costs and benefits of expanding location monitoring.”

The MOJ is “only now” running location monitoring pilots to test how the use of a GPS tag might affect the behaviour of offenders, the report noted.

It also found that original projections suggested that between 160,000 and 220,000 offenders would be tagged in 2016/17 – when in fact the number under the existing programme is expected to be under 65,000.

Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: “The case for a huge expansion of electronic monitoring using GPS was unproven, but the Ministry of Justice pursued an overly ambitious and highrisk strategy anyway. Ultimately, it has not delivered.

“After abandoning its original plans, the Ministry’s new service will now, ironically, be much closer to its existing one. Even if it launches in 2018, it will still be five years late.”

Mr Morse added: “The Ministry has learnt costly lessons from its failings but significant risks still remain.”