“Tagging is not a substitute”: Revolving Doors responds to Government plans for mass tagging rollout
The Government has announced plans for the “biggest expansion of tagging in British history”, with a presumption for electronic monitoring for those leaving prison.
Revolving Doors Chief Executive Pavan Dhaliwal said:
“Electronic monitoring can play a role in protecting victims and managing risk in some cases, particularly in high-harm domestic abuse cases. But we should be cautious about claims being made for tagging as a solution for the wider group of people in repeat contact with the justice system whose offending is clearly driven by unmet health and social needs.
The evidence for preventing and reducing acquisitive crime, like shoplifting, is mixed, and what we are hearing is there’s a real danger that technology makes already complex community supervision more onerous, increasing the risk of breach rather than reducing it.
Revolving Doors has consistently warned that people in the revolving door often struggle with confusing licence conditions, unstable lives and high levels of unmet need, including homelessness. Any enhanced supervision regime must take proper account of housing and homelessness, because we cannot keep setting people up to fail on release and then act surprised when they do. Tagging can support probation, but it cannot substitute for safe housing, trauma-informed support and early diversion into services.”
Any effort to seriously reduce the pressure on probation officers and the use of custodial sentences is a step in the right direction, but the concept of tagging every prison leaver on release is a pipe dream. On average about 800 people per month go straight from prison into homelessness and this is rising fast.
Street homelessness isn’t just a significant barrier in reducing crime, it’s also preventing people from making progress with their life and engaging with support services. And people in the revolving door of crisis and crime are at the sharp end of this.
Around 29,000 people in England and Wales (upper estimate 54,000) are caught in this cycle. They account for more than 130,000 offences each year, costing an estimated £23 billion annually. A 1% reduction in reoffending would save approximately £65 million per year.
Revolving Doors’ Preventing the Revolving Door report has drawn a clear link between crimes of acquisition (low level theft, shoplifting, burglary) and unmet health and social needs – substance use, homelessness, mental ill-health. The Acquisitive Crime scheme pilot where location data of offenders is then mapped against unsolved crimes, is currently live in 19 police force areas. But, by the Government’s own published data, it hasn’t made much of a dent on reducing or preventing repeat lower-level offending. What it has demonstrated is increased interactions with already over-burdened probation officers and neighbourhood policing, both of whom are looking for more impactful solution to repeat low-level offending.
Another challenge against mass tagging for those trapped in the revolving door is that their definition of housing vulnerability must extend to considering the roof they survive under, which far from being a place of safety may proliferate higher drug use, physical and financial abuse and violence. For people in the cycle of substance use and homelessness, tagging is simply not a viable alternative solution to custody and risks perpetuating the cycle of harm to those who need urgent support. And it’s certainly not an appropriate offer for those leaving the prison gate to sleep on the street.
We cannot reduce crime by solely investing in surveillance and tagging. The most common experiences for prolific offenders is childhood trauma and homelessness. Without investing in sustainable housing, we’re funding failure and kicking the can around when what we should be doing is listening to the evidenced link between a stable home for everyone and safer streets.
