Official Statistics

Electronic Monitoring Statistics Annual Publication, March 2023

Published 20 July 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%	The total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device as at March 31 2023 was 17,350, an increase of 13% from 15,394 as at 31 March 2022.
Court bail orders remain 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 an alcohol monitoring device has more than doubled	The number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring device as at 31 March 2023 was 2,248, an increase of 150% from 898 as at 31 March 2022. This increase reflects the national rollout of alcohol monitoring for prison leavers from June 2022.
The number of individuals fitted with a location monitoring device (GPS) has nearly doubled	The number of individuals fitted with a location monitoring device as at 31 March 2023 was 7,398, an increase of 80% from 4,110 as at 31 March 2022. This increase reflects the continued rollout of electronic monitoring to new offender cohorts, particularly immigration bail.
91% of electronically monitored offenders were male	As at 31 March 2023, 91% of electronically monitored offenders with bail, post release, or court sentences were male. This proportion has been broadly stable since 2017.
Individuals aged 30-39 are the predominant age group of electronically monitored offenders	As at March 31 2023, 32% of electronically monitored offenders with bail, post release, or court sentences belonged to this age group.
London has the highest rate of subjects fitted with an electronic monitoring device	As at 31 March 2023, London had 32 electronically monitored offenders with bail, post release, or court sentences per 100,000 of regional population.
EMS performance fell in 2022/23	Performance decreased in 2022/23 relative to the previous year. Of the eight adjusted service level agreement (SLA) measures, across the whole year: five measures declined as compared to 2021/22, one increased, and two were unchanged. Three of the measures met the targets.

Statistician’s comment

Between 31 March 2022 and 31 March 2023 the number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device increased by 13%. 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 53,767 new order notifications, a 5% decrease compared to the year ending 31 March 2022. However, in the same period there were 51,261 completed orders, a 7% decrease on the previous period. This, together with the increasing caseload, indicates orders are on average lasting longer.

This release is the annual version of Electronic Monitoring publication series and contains additional details on protected characteristics, regional data and service level agreements as compared to the quarterly version. 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 notifications each will be counted separately. However, when counting individuals, the subject will be included in a order cohort once. Please see the technical note for more details.

As at 31 March 2023, the total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device or alcohol monitoring device was 17,350, an increase of 13% compared with 31 March 2022.

Figure 1: Overall number of individuals fitted with an Electronic Monitoring or Alcohol Monitoring Device, England and Wales, as at month-end, from March 2017 to March 2023 (Source: Table 1.1)

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 were 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 were the third largest group with 3,522 individuals (20% of the caseload), up by 115% from the previous year.
• court sentences (community orders and suspended sentence orders) were 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 March 2017 to March 2023 (Source: Table 1.1)

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 by 80%, 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, the largest location monitoring cohort was GPS immigration bail, accounting for 48% of all individuals whose primary order was a GPS order.

There were 1,896 new acquisitive crime orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2023. Overall, 3,113 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, from March 2019 to March 2023 (Source: Table 2.4)

3. Alcohol Monitoring

Between 31 March 2022 and 31 March 2023 the total number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring device increased from 898 people to 2,248, an increase of 150%. This primarily reflects the national roll out of alcohol monitoring to the post-release cohort.

There were 8,055 new alcohol monitoring orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2023. Overall, 11,799 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 year, between March 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, from March 2021 to March 2023 (Source: Table 3.1)

4. Protected Characteristics

As at 31 March 2023, there were 13,755 individuals who had Bail, Court Sentence, or Post-Release electronic monitoring device orders. Of these:

• 91% were male and 9% were female;
• 12% were aged under 21, 27% were between 21-29, 32% were between 30-39 and 29% were aged 40 or over, as at 31 March 2023.

Across cohorts, some differences emerge:

• the court bail cohort had the largest proportion of individuals under 21, with 16% of active caseload in this group. By contrast, the post release cohort had the smallest proportion of offenders under 21, representing only 4% of active caseload.
• the post release cohort had the highest proportion of men, representing 94% of caseload. Court sentences were the cohort with the highest proportion of females, representing 14% of active caseload.

Figure 5: Overall number of electronically monitored individuals with Bail, Court Sentence and Post-Release orders by age group, England and Wales, as at 31 March 2023 (Source: Table 4.1)

5. Regional Breakdown

As at 31 March 2023, there were 23 electronically monitored individuals who had Bail, Court Sentence, or Post-Release electronic monitoring device orders per 100,000 population, across England and Wales. This rate varied across regions:

• London had the highest regional rate, with 32 individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device per 100,000 population.
• South West had the lowest regional rate, with 14 individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device per 100,000 population.

Figure 7: Rate of individuals with fitted device per 100,000 local population, as at 31 March 2023 (Source: Table 5.1)

6. Contract Performance

The Electronic Monitoring Service (EMS), part of the Capita group, holds the contract for the provision of EM field and monitoring services, with the tags and hardware being managed through separate contracts with G4S and SCRAM systems, and with Airbus and Telefonica supporting the network delivery. SCRAM systems also provide alcohol monitoring software. Since March 2016 the delivery of the electronic monitoring service has been monitored against a national performance framework to make sure it is delivered in a timely and consistent manner. Data relating to the Alcohol Monitoring Service (AMS) were embedded within the performance from November 2021, following the introduction of this service in March 2021.

Looking across April 2022 and March 2023, across the eight SLA measures, the service level targets were met in three measures. Relative to the previous year five measures declined as compared to 2021/22, one increased, and two were unchanged.

Performance in the first half of the year was better than the second half: in the first half, two of the eight measures missed their target in every month (SLA4c and SLA7b). In the second half of the year five measures missed their target in every month (SLA4a, SLA4b, SLA4c, SLA5b and SLA7b). This change was primarily driven by IT system challenges resulting in slower processing times and the need to recruit more staff to meet increasing demand with longer task completion times.

As a result of the IT issues, which were beyond Capita’s control, the decision was taken to reduce the target for SL4c from 95% to 90% for a period of 3 months, between November 2022 and January 2023.

In March 2023, SL5a and SL5b were merged to form SL5d. For ease of presentation, we have retained the separation in this report, with SL5d performance apportioned to SL5a and SL5b. Performance against SL5d will be included in the next performance publication with effect from April 2023.

Figure 8: National EMS Performance of all available Service Levels for 22/23 Performance Year (01 April 2022 to 31 March 2023), England and Wales (Source: Table 6.1)

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.

Since the last annual publication, released in May 2022, we have implemented a number of changes to our processing:

• For the quarterly publication released in October 2022, we implemented the results of a review of our processes to streamline, automate and improve the accuracy of the analysis presented. Please see the technical note for this release for more details (Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, England and Wales: September 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
• For the quarterly publication released in April 2023, we reviewed, 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 resulted in an increase in the number of individuals fitted with a tag, and was backdated to when the expansion of GPS devices was introduced for this cohort. These processing changes have not had any impact on the operational management of persons monitored. Please see the technical note for this release for more details (Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication, March 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk))

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.

Next Update

The next annual EM Performance Statistics publication is due July 2024. The next quarterly EM Performance Statistics publication is due October 2023.

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:

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

Email: PPAS_statistics@justice.gov.uk