Hundreds of early-release prisoners in England and Wales not being tagged, say MPs

Hundreds of prisoners released early across England and Wales, including stalkers and violent offenders, are not being tagged by Serco, MPs have said, despite promises of the “toughest supervision in British history”.

As the government begins to release a second tranche of 650 offenders to relieve the prison overcrowding crisis, police and probation officers have said they are struggling to cope with a new influx of offenders who are supposed to be monitored in the community.

Speaking during an urgent question in the Commons on Tuesday, the Labour MP Clive Efford asked why the outsourcing company Serco had failed to ensure there were enough tags for prisoners as they leave each prison.

“They are not actually fulfilling their contracts. It can’t be beyond the tech firm’s ability to tag people on release. So what are these companies going to do about it?” he said.

The shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, said most prisoners were not being tagged before release, despite assurances from the government that the tagging system would be the “toughest in history”.

“The justice secretary told the country that proper safeguards would be put in place with a presumption that all released prisoners would be tagged. He called it the toughest tagging regime in history, but that was nonsense,” he said.

Jake Richards, the justice minister, replied: “We are working closely with Serco and have seen an improvement in the implementation since March this year. Although there is a presumption of every person being tagged, ultimately it is an operational decision.”

About 2,000 criminals, including domestic abusers and violent offenders, are being freed this month, with another 3,000 to follow in stages over the next year. The total was reduced from 6,000 after an intervention by Andy Burnham.

Prisoners convicted of manslaughter are excluded, meaning the killers of PC Andrew Harper, who died in the line of duty in 2019, will not be eligible.

Typically, those being released should expect to be electronically tagged and subject to other monitoring conditions for the second third of their sentence.

But the probation service union, Napo, said the releases were putting enormous strain on its members, who monitor offenders in the community.

The union held a pre-ballot meeting on Tuesday on taking strike action over pay and workloads. Pay negotiations ended earlier in October with a “best and final” conditional pay offer worth 5%, which the union’s negotiating committee rejected. Members will be asked to vote for industrial action on pay, along with a question on workloads, in a formal ballot on industrial action to launch on 19 October.

The union says probation officers have been required to take on large amounts of extra work since tens of thousands of prisoners began being released early from 2022.

A senior Prison and Probation Service source said a failure to place tags on released offenders as they left prison meant it could then be up to a month before they were tagged. “If we do not tag them as they leave prison, there is a good chance that we won’t tag them at all before they reoffend,” they said.

Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said many of those who breached the terms of their tags – by consuming alcohol or drugs, or by breaching a curfew, for example – were not facing sanctions if arrested. “We’re seeing 95%-plus of the tagging breaches that we arrest are simply being bailed back into the community on the same condition. So there is zero sanction,” he said.

The number of people in prison has jumped by more than 1,700 in the past three months. The prison population in England and Wales was at 87,499 on Monday, according to Ministry of Justice data, up from 85,761 on 29 June, a rise of 2%.

Alex Norris, the justice secretary, has said released offenders will be monitored under the “toughest supervision in British history”. New restriction zones designed to control the movements of the highest-risk sexual and violent offenders should confine released prisoners to areas a few miles wide, in an effort to reassure their victims.

However, this month the victims’ commissioner, Claire Waxman, said the government’s confidence in the plan was “not yet matched by the reality on the ground”.