Playing tag

The frustrating thing about tagging, or electronic monitoring (EM) is that it could so easily be effective — if only we did it properly. As a former police officer, I can vouch that Theodore Dalrymple is right when he says that it’s a relatively small number of prolific offenders who commit the majority of recorded crime. So if we used the right technology — if these criminals knew that any repeat offence would be almost certain to result in detection and punishment — then reoffending rates would fall. But although there’s a lot of potential in EM, I’m afraid the potential has been unrealised in this country. Ever since 1989, when we first started deploying EM as an alternative to prison and an aid to rehabilitation, we’ve got it wrong.

The Ministry of Justice is preparing to spend £3 billion over nine years on new EM arrangements. These urgently need to be better than those we currently have, but the signs do not look good.