Official Statistics

Electronic Monitoring Statistics Annual Publication, March 2024

Published 18 July 2024

1. Main Points

This publication sets out statistics on the use of electronic monitoring as at 31 March 2024 compared to those at 31 March 2023.

The number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device increased by 16%	The total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device as at 31 March 2024 was 20,084, an increase of 16% from 17,350 as at 31 March 2023.
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 2024 was 7,154, an increase of 14% from 6,284 as at 31 March 2023. Court bail accounted for 36% of all individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device.
The number of individuals fitted with a radio frequency device (RF) accounts for 37% of individuals fitted with a device	The number of individuals fitted with a radio frequency device (RF) as at 31 March 2024 was 7,450, a decrease of 5% from 7,832 as at 31 March 2023.
The number of individuals fitted with a location monitoring device (GPS) accounts for 50% of individuals fitted with a device	The number of individuals fitted with a location monitoring device (GPS) as at 31 March 2024 was 10,031, an increase of 36% from 7,398 as at 31 March 2023.
The number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring device (AM) increased by 27%	The number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring device (AM) as at 31 March 2024 was 2,862, an increase of 27% from 2,248 as at 31 March 2023.
92% of electronically monitored offenders were male	As at 31 March 2024, 92% 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 31 March 2024, 33% of electronically monitored offenders with bail, post-release, or court sentences belonged to this age group.
North West has the highest rate of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device	As at 31 March 2024, North West had 35 electronically monitored offenders with bail, post-release, or court sentences per 100,000 of regional population.
In 2023/24 Service level targets were met in one of the seven SLA measures	Looking across the seven SLA measures laid out in Annex C of the technical note, the service level targets were met in one measure, SL8.

2. Statistician’s comment

Between 31 March 2023 and 31 March 2024, the number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device increased. This has been driven by the increased use of GPS devices, particularly for court bail and immigration cohort, and AM devices, mainly for the post-release cohort, despite the continued decrease in the use of RF devices.

Court bail orders remain the largest cohort of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device, accounting for 36% (7,154) of the 31 March 2024 caseload. The use of electronic monitoring for those on court bail increased sharply in 2020 in response to the covid pandemic’s impact on the courts. Although numbers declined a little, from 2022 the numbers again increased and are now at record levels.

In the year ending 31 March 2024 there were 59,322 new order notifications, a 10% increase compared to the year ending 31 March 2023. In the same period there were 55,879 completed orders, a 9% increase on the previous period.

This release is part of the Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication series. In this release, based on feedback received, a new section presenting the trends in the use of radio frequency devices has been included. Feedback on the content and format of the release is welcome: please see contact details section for further information.

3. Background

Electronic monitoring supports probation, prisons, courts, the police, the Home Office 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 device which is normally fitted to an individual’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; or

• 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 devices; where curfew is the only requirement, these continue to be used. The service was expanded from November 2018 to introduce satellite-enabled location monitoring devices. The devices use GPS technology which can record an individual’s movements 24 hours a day. Rollout was fully completed in March 2021 when the provision of GPS monitoring was extended to under-18s.

GPS devices provide additional functionality, allowing the monitoring of:

• compliance with exclusion zones;

• attendance at a required activity or appointment;

• an offender’s whereabouts known as trail monitoring. This can provide Probation Practitioners with data about an individual’s whereabouts to support rehabilitative conversations. The Police Courts and Sentencing Act 2022 introduced this for Youth Rehabilitation Orders (this is not available for court bail);

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

Since 2021 HMPPS has expanded the use of GPS devices for the following offender cohorts:

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

• Several small pilots for specific offender cohorts, such as Licence Variation, GPS Youth Rehabilitation, and Domestic Abuse Perpetrators 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 (FNOs) 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. This was extended to Scotland from 31 August 2022, and to Northern Ireland from 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. This pilot concluded in December 2023.

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. Those with a non-fitted device have been included within the GPS cohort for the purposes of this analysis.

Alcohol monitoring was introduced to courts in Wales in October 2020 and expanded to courts in England in 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 monitoring device which continuously monitors for the consumption of alcohol via an offender’s sweat.

An AAMR order 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 individual is not alcohol dependent or has an Alcohol Treatment Requirement (ATR) recommended or in place; and

• the individual 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, or

• requires the offender to comply with requirements specified by their Probation Practitioner to address their alcohol needs which will include restricting alcohol use.

An individual may be given several orders at the same time and/or over the course of a year, therefore it is likely there will be more active orders at any one time than there are people being monitored. If an individual has multiple orders:

• when counting order notifications, each notification will be counted separately;

• when counting individuals, the individual will be included in one order cohort once according to a defined formula.

Please see the technical note for more details.

4. Overall Summary

The total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device (a radio frequency, location monitoring device or alcohol monitoring device) as at 31 March 2024 was 20,084, an increase of 16% from 17,350 as at 31 March 2023.

Figure 1: Overall number of individuals fitted with an Electronic Monitoring device, England and Wales, as at end of March, from March 2017 to March 2024 (Source: Table 1.1)

However, the trend in the overall number of individuals fitted with an electronic device differs considerably by type of order:

• Court bail orders make up the largest proportion (36%) of electronically monitored individuals. At 31 March 2024, 7,154 individuals had court bail as their primary order type, up by 14% on the previous year.

• Post-release orders were the second largest group with 5,440 individuals (27% of the caseload), up by 33% when compared with the previous year. This increase is mainly due to the increased use of alcohol monitoring for this group.

• Immigration orders were the third largest group with 4,371 individuals (22% of the caseload), up by 24% when compared with the previous year. The number of individuals in this cohort has steadily increased from August 2021 owing to the expansion projects.

• Court sentences (community orders and suspended sentence orders) were the fourth largest group with 3,034 individuals (15% of the caseload), down by 10% when compared with the previous year.

Figure 2: Individuals fitted with an Electronic Monitoring device, by order type (excluding Specials^{[footnote 1]}), England and Wales, as at end of March, from March 2017 to March 2024 (Source: Table 1.1)

5. Radio Frequency Monitoring

The total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device and whose primary order was an RF order as at 31 March 2024 was 7,450, a decrease of 5% from 7,832 as at 31 March 2023. Over the same period the proportion of individuals whose primary order was a RF order decreased from 45% to 37%.

• Court bail RF orders make up the largest proportion (56%) of RF monitored individuals. At 31 March 2024, 4,140 individuals had RF court bail as their primary order type, a decrease of 4% on the previous year. The use of electronic monitoring for those on RF court bail increased sharply in early 2020 in response to the covid pandemic’s impact on the courts.

• Post-release RF orders were the second largest group with 2,038 individuals (27% of the RF caseload), up by 15% when compared with the previous year.

• Court sentence RF orders (community orders and suspended sentence orders) were the third largest group with 1,272 individuals (17% of the caseload), down by 28% when compared with the previous year. The decline from April 2022 is likely to be associated with mandating domestic abuse and safeguarding enquiries in all cases where electronic monitored curfews are proposed.

• As at 31 March 2024, there are no individuals with immigration RF orders as their primary order type. Home Office Immigration Enforcement (HOIE) have primarily used GPS devices since 2021 which has significantly reduced the numbers of RF devices used.

Figure 3: Individuals fitted with a Radio Frequency Monitoring device, by order type (excluding Specials^{[footnote 1]}), England and Wales, as at end of March, from March 2017 to March 2024 (Source: Table 2.1)

6. Location (GPS) Monitoring

The total number of individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device and whose primary order was an GPS order as at 31 March 2024 was 10,031, an increase of 36% from 7,398 as at 31 March 2023. Over the same period the proportion of individuals whose primary order was a GPS order increased from 43% to 50%.

There were 2,162 new acquisitive crime orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2024. Overall, 5,275 new acquisitive crime orders have been imposed since they were introduced in April 2021.

Figure 4: Individuals fitted with a Location Monitoring device, by order type (excluding Specials^{[footnote 1]}), England and Wales, as at end of March, March 2019 to March 2024 (Source: Table 3.1)

7. Alcohol Monitoring

The total number of individuals fitted with an alcohol monitoring device as at 31 March 2024 was 2,862, an increase of 27% from 2,248 as at 31 March 2023.

There were 12,593 new alcohol monitoring orders imposed across England and Wales in the year ending 31 March 2024. Overall, 24,392 new alcohol monitoring orders have been imposed since their introduction in October 2020.

Of the alcohol monitoring devices in use to monitor AAMRs over the last year, between March 2023 and March 2024, the devices did not register a tamper or alcohol alert for 97.6% of the days worn. Since their introduction in October 2020, the devices did not register a tamper or alcohol alert for 97.3% of the days worn.

Figure 5: Overall number of individuals with an Alcohol Monitoring Order, England and Wales, as at end of March, March 2021 to March 2024 (Source: Table 4.1)

8. Protected Characteristics

As at 31 March 2024, there were 15,628 individuals who had bail, court sentence, or post-release electronic monitoring device orders. Of these:

• 92% were male and 7% were female; the remaining individuals were either of unknown gender, did not disclose their gender, or identified as non-binary;
• 12% were aged under 21, 26% were between 21-29, 33% were between 30-39 and 29% were aged 40 or over, as at 31 March 2024.

Across cohorts, some differences emerge:

• The court sentence cohort had the largest proportion of individuals under 21, with 17% 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 95% of caseload. Court sentences were the cohort with the highest proportion of females, representing 11% of active caseload.

Figure 6: Overall number of electronically monitored individuals with Bail, Court Sentence and Post-Release orders by age group, England and Wales, 31 March 2024 (Source: Table 5.1)

9. Regional Breakdown

As at 31 March 2024, there were 26 electronically monitored individuals who had bail, court sentence, or post-release electronic monitoring device orders per 100,000 population, across England and Wales. This figure varied across regions:

• North West had the highest regional rate, with 35 individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device per 100,000 population.
• South West had the lowest regional rate, with 15 individuals fitted with an electronic monitoring device per 100,000 population.

Figure 7: Rate of individuals with fitted device per 100,000 local population, England and Wales, 31 March 2024 (Source: Table 6.1)

10. Contract Performance

The Electronic Monitoring Service (EMS), part of the Capita group, held the contract for the provision of EM field and monitoring services. The devices and hardware are managed through separate contracts with G4S and SCRAM systems. Additionally, Airbus and Telefonica support 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. Following the introduction of the Alcohol Monitoring Service (AMS) in March 2021 we began reporting on its performance data in November 2021.

In 2023/24 for the seven SLA measures detailed in Annex C of the technical note, the service level targets were met in only one.

Figure 8: National EMS Performance of all available Service Levels for 2023/24 Performance Year (01 April 2023 to 31 March 2024), England and Wales (Source: Table 7.1)

11. Further information

Accompanying files

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

• Data tables

• Technical note

Official Statistics

Our Statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.

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).

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 data provider EMS are in the process of reviewing acquisitive crime records within the case management system. If any changes are made to the data, it will be revised in the next release of the Electronic Monitoring Statistics Publication series.

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.

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

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

Email: ppas_statistics@justice.gov.uk

Next update: 2025, Date TBA

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1. Please refer to Annex A within the technical note ↩ ↩² ↩³