Burglars to be tagged and tracked round the clock to stop reoffending

ALL burglars released from prison are to be fitted with GPS tags so they can be tracked 24/7, the policing minister has revealed.

Kit Malthouse said he wanted freed burglars to be tagged so police forces could check every burglary in their area against the movements of the criminals to see if they could be suspects.

He said a change in the law through a statutory instrument would mean probation and police could request and enforce the tagging as a condition of their licence so they could be tracked every minute of the day to within feet.

Refusal to wear the tag would breach their licence, returning them to prison. The order could cover the entire period of their licence so a burglar released halfway through a four-year jail term could be tagged for a further two years in what ministers believe would be a major deterrent to reoffending.

“By adjusting the law – we can do it by statutory instrument – it will then allow us to put the tag on every burglar’s ankle for a period after their release on licence,” said Mr Malthouse.

“In simple terms, it can tell all police forces whether a former burglar has been in their area and they can match it up with burglary data.

“Fifty per cent of burglaries are done by former burglars. It should be a major deterrent to them going out and plying their previous trade.”

The tagging will initially be trialled by six forces, but Mr Malthouse said he wanted it to be a blanket policy so that “everybody who has a burglary conviction gets GPS tagged”.

There are nearly 400,000 burglaries every year of which fewer than one in 20 are solved.

The GPS tagging could be extended to other “geographically-based” crimes such as muggers and robbers. About 1,000 GPS tags are currently being used by probation, police and the courts

largely to enforce “exclusion zones” around victims of domestic violence and sexual offences, and to prevent violent criminals in, for example, county lines gangs working with their former associates.

The technology is more sophisticated than previous tagging, which simply alerted those monitoring offenders if an individual left their home.

Mr Malthouse said he did not believe it would breach human rights as the principle was established with tagging for home detention curfews and alcohol intake; the alternative for an offender was prison and it protected the public.

The minister pioneered sobriety ankle tags when he was in charge of policing in London nearly 10 years ago under the former mayor Boris Johnson. The technology, which regularly tests an offender’s alcohol levels in their skin, is also due to be extended nationwide after successful trials. Mr Malthouse said the pilots had shown it needed to be applied for extended periods to break the cycle of criminality.

Theft and burglary have the highest reoffending rates, with perpetrators on average committing five such offences.

The plan was welcomed last night by Dame Vera Baird, the victims’ commissioner, who said: “Burglaries can be a traumatic terrible crime. Anything that reduces it and deters burglars from committing it is a good thing. But GPS tracking can also be used in many other offences such as domestic abuse and sexual violence and hopefully the Government will go beyond just burglaries and look at those crimes.”