Official Statistics

Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, England and Wales: March 2023

Published 27 April 2023

Main Points

This publication sets out statistics on the use of electronic monitoring from 31 March 2022 to 31 March 2023.

The number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device increased by 13%	At 31 March 2023, the total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device was 17,350, an increase of 13% from 15,394 as at 31 March 2022.
Court bail orders remains the largest cohort of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device	The number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device under a court bail order as at 31 March 2023 was 6,284, an increase of 13% from 5,583 as at 31 March 2022. Court bail accounted for 36% of all individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device.
The number of individuals fitted with a location monitoring device (GPS) accounts for 43% of individuals fitted with a device	The number of individuals fitted with a location monitoring device (GPS) as at 31 March 2023 was 7,398, an increase of 80% from 4,110 as at 31 March 2022. This increase is the result of the continued rollout of electronic monitoring to new offender cohorts, particularly immigration bail.
The number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring device has more than doubled	As at 31 March 2023, 2,248 individuals were fitted with an alcohol monitoring device, a 150% increase from 898 as at 31 March 2022. This increase reflects the national rollout of alcohol monitoring for prison leavers from June 2022.

Statistician’s comment

Between 31 March 2022 and 31 March 2023 the number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device increased. This increase was driven by extensions to the use of location (GPS) monitoring tags for new offender cohorts, particularly for immigration bail, as well as the continued roll out of alcohol monitoring tags. However, over the same period the number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device and whose primary order type was a court sentence has decreased by 32%. This decrease began from April 2022 and is likely to be associated with mandating domestic abuse and safeguarding checks in all cases where electronic monitored curfews are proposed, which was introduced from April 2022.

Court bail orders remain the largest cohort of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device, accounting for 36% (6,284) of the 31 March 2023 caseload. The use of electronic monitoring for those on court bail increased sharply in early 2020 in response to the covid pandemic’s impact on the courts. Although numbers slowly decreased during 2021, the number is now at a record level.

In the year ending 31 March 2023 there were 53,576 new order notifications, a 5% decrease compared to the year ending 31 March 2022. However, in the same period there were 51,170 completed orders, a 7% decrease on the previous period. This, together with the increasing caseload, indicates orders are on average lasting longer.

Since the last publication the number of individuals fitted with an electronic device within the immigration cohort from September 2021 have been revised upwards: please see the data quality section for more information.

This release is part of the Electronic Monitoring Statistics publication series. Feedback on the content and format of the release is welcome: please see contact details section for further information.

Background

Electronic monitoring supports the police, courts, prisons and the wider justice system in England and Wales. It is a way of remotely monitoring and recording information on an individual’s whereabouts or movements and alcohol consumption, using an electronic tag which is normally fitted to a subject’s ankle. Information about the compliance with an individual’s order is monitored. Electronic monitoring may be used:

• as a condition of court bail

• as a requirement of a court sentence, primarily community orders and suspended sentence orders

• for Home Detention Curfew

• as a licence condition following release from custody

• as a condition of immigration bail, managed by the Home Office

• to intensively monitor a small number of individuals including: some of the highest risk offenders managed under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA); those granted bail by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC); and those made subject to Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs)

Electronic monitoring was first introduced in 1999 to monitor compliance with curfews using radio frequency (RF) tags. This was expanded from November 2018 to introduce satellite enabled (GPS) location monitoring tags. The tags use GPS technology to record an individual’s movements 24 hours a day. Roll out was fully completed in March 2021 when the provision of GPS monitoring was extended to under 18s.

GPS tags provide additional functionality, allowing the monitoring of:

• compliance with exclusion zones

• attendance at a required activity or appointment

• an offender’s whereabouts (trail monitoring)

• multiple conditions or requirements if necessary, such as a combination of exclusion zones, curfew, monitored attendance and trail monitoring

More recently HMPPS has expanded the use of GPS tags to two offender cohorts:

• acquisitive crime: From April 2021 they have been used as a licence condition for adult offenders convicted of an acquisitive crime as their principal offence and who have received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more and been released on licence. This is currently being piloted by 19 police forces. In late October 2022 this was expanded to those who had received a custodial sentence of 90 days or more and been released on licence

• immigration expansion: The Immigration Act 2016 introduced a duty on the Home Office Secretary of State to impose an electronic monitoring condition on Foreign National Offenders and other non-UK citizens subject to deportation proceedings. Following this, in August 2021, HMPPS began using GPS monitoring for those individuals who had been released from Prisons or Immigration Detention under ‘Immigration Bail’ on behalf of the Home Office. From 31 August 2022 this was extended to Scotland and Northern Ireland in December 2022. The Home Office also commenced a pilot in June 2022 to impose an electronic monitoring condition of immigration bail to non-FNO asylum claimants who arrive in the UK via unnecessary and dangerous routes

Electronic monitoring using a non-fitted device was introduced in November 2022 for the immigration cohort. These devices utilise periodic biometric verification as an alternative to using fitted devices.

Alcohol monitoring was introduced to courts in Wales in October 2020 and expanded to courts in England on 31 March 2021 to support the new community sentencing option, the Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirement (AAMR). An AAMR may only be used when sentencing for alcohol-related criminal behaviour and it imposes a total ban on drinking alcohol for up to 120 days. Compliance with the ban is monitored electronically using an alcohol tag which continuously monitors for the presence of alcohol in offenders’ sweat.

It may be imposed by the court as part of a community order or suspended sentence order where:

• the offence, or associated offence, for which the requirement is being imposed, is alcohol-related

• the subject is not alcohol dependent or has an Alcohol Treatment Requirement (ATR) recommended or in place

• the subject is an adult (18 years or over)

For offenders being released from custody whose offending and risk is alcohol related, an Alcohol Monitoring on Licence (AML) additional licence condition was introduced in Wales in November 2021 and rolled out in England in June 2022. There are two licence conditions available for AML:

• requires total abstinence from alcohol

• requires the offender to comply with requirements specified by their Probation Practitioner to address their alcohol needs, this will include limiting alcohol use

1. Overall Summary

An individual may be given several orders at the same time and/or over the course of a year. Therefore there will be more active orders at any one time than there are people being monitored. If an individual has multiple orders, when looking at order notification each will be counted separately. However, when counting individuals, the subject will be included in a order cohort once according to a defined formula, unless an individual is fitted with both an alcohol and RF or GPS tag, in which case they will be counted twice. Consequently the number of dual tagged individuals must be subtracted to correctly count the number of individuals. Please see the technical note for more details.

At 31 March 2023, the total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device (a radio frequency device for Home Detention Curfews or location device) or an alcohol monitoring device was 17,350, an increase of 13% compared with 31 March 2022. Although the monthly figures fluctuate, the trend over the 12-month period has been upwards.

Figure 1: Overall number of individuals fitted with an Electronic Monitoring or Alcohol Monitoring Device, England and Wales, as at month-end, from April 2017 to December 2022 (Source: Table 1.4)

However, the caseload mix differs considerably by type of order in both absolute number and trend over time:

• court bail orders make up the largest proportion (36%) of electronically monitored individuals. At 31 March 2023, 6,284 individuals had court bail as their primary order type, up by 13% on the previous year

• post-release orders was the second largest group with 4,102 individuals (24% of the caseload), up by 30% when compared with the previous year. This increase is mainly due to the national roll out of alcohol monitoring to this group

• immigration orders was the third largest group with 3,522 individuals (20% of the caseload)

• court sentences (community orders and suspended sentence orders) was the fourth largest group with 3,369 individuals (19% of the caseload), down by 32% on the same point in the previous year

Figure 2: Individuals fitted with an Electronic Monitoring or Alcohol Monitoring device, by order type (excluding Specials), England and Wales, as at month-end, from April 2017 to December 2022 (Source: Table 1.4)

2. Location (GPS) Monitoring

Between 31 March 2022 and 31 March 2023 the number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device and whose primary order was a GPS order increased from 4,110 people to 7,398. Over the same period the proportion of individuals whose primary order was a GPS order increased from 27% to 43%. This increase in the numbers and relative use of GPS tags is the result of expanding the use of electronic monitoring to new offender cohorts, particularly immigration bail. As at 31 March 2023 GPS immigration bail accounted for 48% of all individuals whose primary order was a GPS order.

There were 1,868 new acquisitive crime orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2023. Overall, 3,085 new acquisitive crime orders have been imposed since they were introduced.

Figure 3: Acquisitive Crimes Offenders and Foreign National Offenders, England and Wales, as at month-end, January 2019 to December 2022 (Source: Table 2.2)

3. Alcohol Monitoring

There were 7,968 new alcohol monitoring orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2023, a large increase from the 3,621 seen in the year ending 31 March 2022. This primarily reflects the national roll out of alcohol monitoring as a sentencing option and its expansion to the post-release cohort. Correspondingly the number of individuals with an alcohol monitoring tag increased from 898 as at 31 March 2022 to 2,248 as at 31 March 2023. Overall 11,712 new alcohol monitoring orders have been imposed since their introduction.

Of the alcohol tags in use to monitor alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirements (AAMR) over the last quarter, between December 2022 and March 2023, the tags did not register a tamper or alcohol alert 97.1% of the days worn. Since their introduction in October 2020, the tags did not register a tamper or alcohol alert 97.1% of the days worn.

Figure 4: Overall number of individuals with an Alcohol Monitoring Order, England and Wales, as at month-end, October 2020 to December 2022 (Source: Table 3.1)

Further information

Accompanying files

Accompanying files As well as this bulletin, the following products are published as part of this release:

• Tables

• Technical note

Data Quality

The statistics in this bulletin are classified as official statistics. The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 defines ‘official statistics’ as all those statistical outputs produced by the UK Statistics Authority’s executive office (the Office for National Statistics), by central Government departments and agencies, by the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and by other Crown bodies (over 200 bodies in total). The statistics in this bulletin comply with all aspects of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The Code encourages and supports producers of statistics to maintain their independence and to ensure adequate resourcing for statistical production. It helps producers and users of statistics by setting out the necessary principles and practices to produce statistics that are trustworthy, high quality and of public value.

This publication has been produced to the high professional standards as set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics. However, the analysis is only as good as the data upon which it is based, and there is inherent uncertainty when the data is derived from diverse administrative data systems.

Since the last publication we have, with the Home Office, reviewed the methodology used to adjust the number of individuals within the immigration cohort who are fitted with an electronic monitoring device. This adjustment was introduced when it was realised that following the commencement of Section 10 of the Immigration Act 2016 in August 2021, which significantly increased the numbers with an EM requirement on immigration bail, that an error in the case management system was incorrectly labelling them as not having a tag fitted. A data system correction has now been applied. However, this has shown that the adjustment did not completely correct the issue and underestimated the numbers fitted with a tag. The assumptions on which the adjustment was based have been adjusted and backdated, which has resulted in an increase in the number of individuals fitted with a tag. These processing changes have not had any impact on the operational management of persons monitored.

For further details on the methodology used to compile the report, please refer to the technical note.

Future publications

Our statisticians regularly review the content of publications. Development of new and improved statistical outputs is usually dependent on reallocating existing resources. As part of our continual review and prioritisation, we welcome user feedback on existing outputs including content, breadth, frequency and methodology. Please send any comments you have on this publication including suggestions for further developments or reductions in content.

Contact

Press enquiries should be directed to the Ministry of Justice press office:

Tel: 020 3334 3536

Email: newsdesk@justice.gov.uk

Other enquiries about these statistics should be directed to Data and Analysis at the Ministry of Justice:

Julie Sullivan
HMPPS Electronic Monitoring Performance
Data and Analysis
Ministry of Justice
10th Floor
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

Email: statistics.enquiries@justice.gov.uk

Next update: July 2023

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