Overview
- The Metropolitan Police announced the pilot on Sunday and will not routinely act on curfew breaches or tag battery failures that last less than an hour unless the case shows safeguarding issues, clear public risk, or persistent offending.
- The Met says officers are handling more than 100 tag alerts a day and arresting two to three recalled prisoners weekly, and it expects the trial to cut breach responses that need police action by over 15 percent.
- For each alert the force will still review the data from electronic tags but will prioritise high‑risk offenders such as domestic abusers for immediate action.
- Police and probation staff say practical problems drive the change, including delays in breach notifications, slow tag fitting and shortages of supervision capacity that can leave victims exposed and officers tied up on low‑value calls.
- The Government defends the early‑release and tagging expansion as necessary to relieve prison pressures and says it will widen tagging and strengthen licence powers while pledging extra funding for police and probation services.