Official Statistics

Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, England and Wales: September 2022

Published 20 October 2022

Main Points

This publication sets out statistics on the use of electronic monitoring from 30 September 2021 to 30 September 2022.

The number of individuals being actively monitored increased by 12%	At 30 September 2022, the total number of individuals actively monitored was 14,996 , an increase from 13,371 as at 30 September 2021.
Electronic monitoring device court bail orders remains the largest cohort of individuals actively monitored by an electronic monitoring device	The number of individuals actively monitored under a court bail order was 5,979 as at 30 September 2022 or 40% of all individuals actively monitored. This is a 9% increase from 5,471 as at 30 September 2021.
The number of individuals being actively monitored with a location monitoring device (GPS) has more than doubled	Between 30 September 2021 and 30 September 2022 the number of individuals actively monitored with a location monitoring device (GPS) increased by 143% (from 2,161 to 5,243). This increase is the result of the continued roll-out of electronic monitoring to new offender cohorts, particularly immigration bail.
The number of individuals being actively monitored with an alcohol monitoring device has more than doubled	As at 30 September 2022, 1,503 individuals were actively monitored with an alcohol monitoring device, a 153% increase from 593 as at 30 September 2021. This reflects both the continued national roll-out of alcohol monitoring from March 2021 and the introduction of alcohol monitoring for prison leavers.

Statistician’s comment

Between 30 September 2021 and 30 September 2022 the number of individuals actively monitored 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 actively monitored and whose primary order type was a court sentence has decreased by 48%. This decrease began from April 2022 and is likely to be associated with mandating domestic abuse and safeguarding checks in all cases where electronic monitoring is proposed, which was introduced from April 2022.

Court bail orders remain the largest cohort of individuals actively monitored by an electronic monitoring device, accounting for 40% (5,979) of the caseload as at 30 September 2022. 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, and although numbers appeared to be slowly decreasing in 2021, the number is now at a record level.

In the year ending 30 September 2022 there were 55,010 new order notifications, a 1% decrease compared to the year ending 30 September 2021. However, in the same period there were 52,167 completed orders, a 5% decrease on the previous period. This, together with the increasing caseload, indicates orders are on average lasting longer.

This is the second release in the Electronic Monitoring Statistics publication series, and the first quarterly version of the report. We would welcome any feedback as to the content and format - please see contact details section for further details.

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 sentences;

• for Home Detention Curfew

• as a licence condition following release from custody;

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

• 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. This was expanded from November 2018 to introduce satellite enabled (GPS) location monitoring. GPS tags are now available to sentencers and decision makers as an option for court and post-custody cohorts. This is in addition to the use of GPS tags to monitor a small number of specialist cases. 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 use of GPS tags to two offender cohorts:

• 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 these individuals who have 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 is planned to extend to Northern ireland in late 2022.

• acquisitive crime: From April 2021 they have been used as a licence condition for adult offenders convicted of acquisition crime and who have served a prison sentence of 12 months or more. This is currently being piloted in 19 police forces.

Alcohol monitoring was introduced in October 2020 and went live throughout England and Wales 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; and

• 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) licence condition was introduced in Wales in November 2021 and was rolled out to England in June 2022. There are two conditions available for AML:

• requires total abstinence from alcohol, or

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

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 orders each will be counted separately, while when counting individuals the subject will be included in a order cohort once according to a defined order (please see the technical note for more details).

At 30 September 2022, the total number of individuals actively monitored with an electronic monitoring device or alcohol monitoring device was 14,996, an increase of 12% compared with 30 September 2021. Although the monthly figures fluctuate from month to month, the trend over the 12 month period has been upwards.

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

1. Electronic Monitoring Devices (Radio Frequency and GPS Tags)

Electronic monitoring devices are defined as radio frequency tags (used for Home Detention Curfews) and location (GPS) tags, and exclude alcohol monitoring tags. As at 30 September 2022 the number of individuals actively monitored with an electronic monitoring device was 13,602, an increase of 6% compared to 30 September 2021. However, the electronic monitoring device caseload differs considerably by type of order in both absolute number and trend over time:

• court bail orders make up the largest proportion of electronic monitoring device orders for individuals on the caseload (44% of the caseload of monitored individuals excluding those monitored only with alcohol tags). At 30 September 2022, 5,979 individuals had court bail as their primary order type, up by 9% on the previous year.

• post-release orders was the second largest group with 3,194 individuals (23% of the caseload), up by 19% when compared with the previous year.

• court sentences (community orders and suspended sentence orders) was the third largest group with 2,225 individuals (16% of the caseload), down by 48% on the same point in the previous year.

• immigration orders was the fourth largest group with 2,146 individuals (16% of the caseload).

Figure 2: Individuals actively monitored by an electronic monitoring device, by order type (excluding Specials), England and Wales, as at month-end, from April 2017 to September 2022 (Source: Table 1.4)

2. Location (GPS) Monitoring

Between 30 September 2021 and 30 September 2022 the number of individuals monitored using a GPS tag more than doubled, increasing from 2,161 people to 5,243. Over the same period the proportion of all monitored subjects (excluding those with an alcohol monitoring tag) that have a GPS tag increased by from 17% to 39%. 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 30 September 2022 GPS immigration bail accounted for 41% of all individuals with a GPS tag.

There were 1,659 new acquisitive crime orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 30 September 2022. Overall 2,008 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 September 2022 (Source: Table 2.2)

3. Alcohol Monitoring

There were 5,215 new alcohol monitoring orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 30 September 2022, a large increase from the 1,655 seen in the year ending 30 September 2021. This primarily reflects the roll-out nationally 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 593 as at 30 September 2021 to 1,503 as at 30 September 2022. Overall 6,870 new alcohol monitoring orders have been imposed since they were introduced.

Of the alcohol tags in use to monitor alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirements (AAMR) over the last quarter, between July 2022 and September 2022, the tags did not register a tamper or alcohol alert 97.0% of the time. Since their introduction in October 2020, the tags did not register a tamper or alcohol alert 97.1% of the time.

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

Further information

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.

The addition of GPS monitoring devices and alcohol monitoring devices under the electronic monitoring expansion programme has created challenges with data recording on the contractors’ management information systems. As a result we have had to make a number of adjustments to the data to more accurately capture the numbers of actively monitored individuals in this release. Since the last release we have reviewed our methodology and have progressed with our plan to put in place a more automated and systematic process for making these adjustments, which has resulted in some revisions to figures. While the figures for the most recent quarter should be treated as provisional, all other data should now be final. We do not currently expect to revise these figures again, but if we identify any errors they will be corrected in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

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: January 2023

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