The electronic tagging system due to help monitor thousands of prisoners released early is not yet working as effectively as it should, England and Wales’s probation watchdog has warned.
Martin Jones, HM inspector of probation, said current arrangements were too dependent on police and probation staff manually checking information about individual offenders, rather than receiving automatic alerts when a possible breach occurs.
The warning comes as the government prepares to release up to 5,000 prisoners from 1 October in response to severe pressure on prison places. The prison population is about 86,500, with around 2,400 spare places available, according to the figures cited in the source material.
Early release schemes shift more responsibility onto probation, police and community monitoring services. That means the quality of electronic monitoring matters not only for public safety, but also for victims, local communities and staff already managing heavy caseloads.
Jones told the Guardian that some tagging systems were “pretty clunky” and said information should be sent directly to practitioners as a matter of course. He said the system needed to be upgraded so authorities could be alerted if a released offender entered an exclusion zone they had been banned from.
Electronic tags can be used to monitor curfews, location and, in some cases, movements through GPS technology. The information can help probation staff assess whether a person is complying with licence conditions after leaving custody. However, Jones said the value of tagging depends on having enough people and reliable processes to act on the information produced.
“Tagging has potential to improve public perception of victims’ safety,” he said. “But only if it used properly and if there is a wider system and enough staff to support that. If not, there is a risk that you give false assurances to the public.”
The government has said offenders released early will face tighter supervision in the community. The prime minister has also said GPS monitoring will be used for rapists to restrict their movements.
The early release plans have already been changed. Ministers have announced that prisoners convicted of rape, serious child sexual abuse offences and grooming will be excluded from the scheme, reducing the number of releases by about 1,000. The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that people convicted of murder and domestic abuse offences will still be eligible for early release under the rules reported.
The number of people being electronically monitored in England and Wales has doubled over five years to 28,700. The system is also expected to expand further, with an estimated 22,000 people newly tagged each year from 2027.
Jones said that growth raised a central question about whether staffing, technology and procedures had kept pace. He said tagging itself only provides information about where someone is at a particular point in time. Police and probation officers must then decide whether that information changes the risk assessment or requires further action.
That concern has also been raised by the National Audit Office. Last month, the spending watchdog said the rapid expansion of electronic monitoring to reduce pressure on prisons could put public safety at risk unless stronger improvements were made.
The audit report pointed to problems with the early performance of one external contractor, Serco. It said that between August 2024 and July 2025 some people were not tagged on time and officials were not notified promptly about potential breaches. The report said performance had since improved.
For households and communities, the practical issue is whether the state has enough capacity to supervise people released from custody earlier than they otherwise would have been. Electronic tagging can support that supervision, but it is not a substitute for trained staff, clear procedures and timely enforcement.
Probation services have been under sustained pressure as more people are managed outside prison. Jones said he had been anxious about readiness when the government introduced the SDS 40 early release scheme, which allows some prisoners to leave custody after serving 40% of their sentence.
He said there had been improvements, including about 1,000 additional probation officers and probation staff compared with a couple of years ago. However, he said the wider system still needed “a sustained period of investment, and stabilisation”.
Jones also raised concerns about approved premises, which are hostels used to supervise around 2,000 of the most serious offenders immediately after release from prison. He said research showed they were effective in managing people after custody, but warned that staffing shortages could reduce their ability to operate.
“What a missed opportunity if those premises cannot remain open because of our insufficient staff,” he said.
The watchdog welcomed the decision to delay the first group of about 700 releases from 2 September to October, saying he hoped the uncertainty around the policy was now over. The extra time may help probation and tagging services prepare, but the inspection’s findings underline that supervision in the community depends on more than fitting a device. It requires reliable alerts, enough trained staff and clear systems for responding when risks change.
