Overview

• Ministers laid the Sentencing Bill on Tuesday, introducing a presumption that people leaving prison will be electronically tagged unless probation decides otherwise.
• A six-month pilot starting in October will fit tags in prison reception at six sites, with around 1,200 orders expected to close the post-release surveillance gap.
• The Ministry of Justice estimates up to 22,000 additional offenders and defendants will be monitored each year in the largest expansion of tagging since 1999.
• Serco staff will fit and activate devices before release instead of scheduling home visits that previously took up to 48 hours and sometimes longer.
• The package includes about £100 million for electronic monitoring and roughly £700 million for probation plus 1,300 new officers, as charities warn tagging must support reintegration and be backed by sufficient probation capacity.