Latest news with #taggingtechnology
Times
21-05-2025
- Times
Offender spent 409 days waiting for monitoring tag to be fitted
A violent criminal who left a man in a coma was untagged for more than a year, casting doubt on plans for a mass expansion of tagging technology. Wood Green crown court in north London was told this month that the man had been subject to curfew conditions for 409 days after being convicted of grievous bodily harm (GBH). He was meant to be fitted with an electronic tag to enable the Probation Service to monitor his movements. The offender's defence team told the court that he had complied with the conditions and had made repeated requests for an appointment for a tag to be fitted. The conditions were 350 days of a nine-hour curfew and 59 days of a six-hour curfew. He had been
Times
19-05-2025
- Times
40,000 criminals to be tagged in sentencing law overhaul
Almost 40,000 criminals will be electronically monitored at any one time as part of a mass expansion of tagging technology that will be at the heart of sentencing law reforms. Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is understood to have secured £700 million funding from Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to buy nearly 30,000 more devices. This will increase the Probation Service's budget by about a third and enable it to quadruple the number of criminals fitted with electronic tags. The Ministry of Justice is also understood to be close to announcing a new form of tags that will monitor an offender's consumption of illicit drugs by measuring their blood pressure and heart rate. Mahmood has described drug-monitoring devices as the 'holy grail' of tagging technology because
