Threefold Rise In Offenders Who Break Tagging Rules

The number of inmates freed early from Scottish prisons who have been sent back to jail for breaching their electronic tagging orders has nearly tripled in the past five months.

More than 1,500 prisoners have been released with an electronic tag up to four months ahead of their scheduled liberty date under the home detention curfew (HDC) scheme introduced last June to ease pressure on overcrowded jails.

The Scotsman has learned that nearly 240 of those – 16 per cent – have been recalled to prison for breaching the terms of the curfew, with some having committed further offences.

In the first six months, the breach rate was around 11 per cent, with 90 of the 800 prisoners released early subsequently recalled.

Most prisoners recalled to jail have committed what the Scottish Prison Service calls “technical” breaches, such as failing to stay within their home at night or tampering with their monitoring device.

But the prison service said it was aware of seven tagged prisoners who had reoffended, and admitted others might have committed further crimes.

A leading expert on electronic monitoring last night warned that increased use of tagging without proper support to integrate offenders back into society was “asking for trouble”.

Mike Nellis, professor of criminal and community justice in the Glasgow School of Social Work, said he feared tagging would become a “false economy” if the technological curbs were not backed up by professional support for offenders.

Critics of HDC in Scotland, which allows an offender to spend the final four months of a sentence at home, have questioned whether the curfew scheme is “prison on the cheap”, and fear it will jeopardise public safety.

But the SPS says the scheme has freed up around 300 spaces for more dangerous criminals and insists no-one released early has committed serious crimes.

An SPS spokesman was unable to explain the increased breach rate, but said: “This is not a significant cause for concern. It compares favourably with other release schemes such as parole.”

Prof Nellis believes the rising breach rate could be explained by the possibility that prison managers are now placing slightly higher-risk offenders on curfews.

He said: “When HDC was introduced, there was heightened awareness over early release. It meant that prisons were particularly careful in those early days only to release very low-risk prisoners. That may since have been relaxed slightly.

“Ninety days [the length of curfew] may be pushing it with some offenders. Even 60 days may be pushing it. To expect people to obey the rules without social support strikes me as asking for trouble,” he added.

Some eastern European and Scandinavian countries are in favour of electronic monitoring to save money and reduce the number of low-risk offenders in custody.

Prof Nellis said they were looking to Sweden, which releases prisoners on HDC only if they are given social-work support, as the preferred model, rather than the UK, whose track record has been blighted by a few high-profile crimes committed by tagged offenders.

Meanwhile yesterday, it emerged that prisoners released early under England’s tagging scheme, introduced at a cost of £342 million, committed, or were accused of, four times more crimes last year than in 2000. Just one in 40 tagged individuals committed a crime when the project started in 1999, but by last year the figure had jumped to one in nine.

South of the Border, HDCs have been expanded over the years to include higher-risk offenders, while the maximum length of a curfew was raised in 2003 from 60 days to 135 days.

SNP MSP Kenny MacAskill, who is tipped to become Scotland’s next justice minister, said there was “clearly a role for home-detention curfews”.

He added: “Prisons have to be for serious offenders and dangerous people. If you have people approaching the end of their sentence who are not assessed as dangerous, then ensuring punishment and monitoring elsewhere is advantageous for the public and their rehabilitation.”

But he said more community support was needed to ensure those released did not end up back behind bars.

“This requires integration, not simply release with a tag. There have to be other services to help their rehabilitation into the community and address other problems they may have, such as alcohol or drug abuse.”