Tagging may be in Tory election plans

A renewed commitment to the electronic tagging of young hooligans may be set to find its way into the Conservative election manifesto under plans being drawn up by the Downing Street Policy Unit and the Home Office.

But the same old irony remains: that it is precisely these kinds of offenders - gangs of thugs who rampage through city centres or council estates - who are least likely to be suitable cases for the device.

No one, not least at the Home Office - which has already emphasised it cannot force courts to use it - appears to envisage an explosion in the numbers of louts and rowdies restrained by such means.

Under the pilot schemes already in existence, in which tagging is used to enforce curfew orders, offenders have cut off their electronic anklets for reasons such being made to feel like a dog, or because of an attack by other youths.

While early technological hitches seem to have been ironed out, only 50 orders have resulted from the pilots in Reading, Norfolk and Manchester. They have already been extended once in an effort to drum up enthusiasm.

Much as the Tories want to use tagging as part of a crusade against anti- social and threatening behaviour, magistrates remain highly cautious about its place among other community sentences and sceptical about its use in all but a handful of cases.

In the meantime, the cost is enormous. Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, puts it at around pounds 30,000 per taggee - based on the pounds 1.3m committed to the pilot schemes. According to Mr Fletcher, that is twice as expensive as jail.

He also estimates that it would require at least 15,000 offenders to be tagged, instead of imprisoned, for the scheme to be cost-effective.

Home Office officials appear to be setting their ambitions somewhat lower at this stage, but in the meantime they are desperately seeking alternatives to expensive jail terms for less serious offenders.

The principal targets are not, as Tory politicians would like us to think, inner-city hooligans, but the fine defaulters cluttering up the jails, often women and people who fail to pay their television licence. Two further target groups are offenders who might merit two to three months in jail for property-related crimes, and as a way of monitoring prisoners released on parole or licence.

Such plans at least have the advantage of not seeking to restrain the kind of offender who is inherently unstable, and often violent. Rosemary Thomson, chairman of the Magistrates Association, said magistrates were also cautiously optimistic that tagging for fine defaulting might prove useful.

This comes at a time when magistrates appear to have dropped any faith in curfews and tagging as a means of preventing further offending, except in a rather limited number of cases. They now suggest it should be used purely as a punishment restricting liberty. It would not, however, produce money from people who had failed to pay.

There is much more scepticism about using such a punishment for petty criminals who would otherwise merit jail. Mr Fletcher said: "In reality, the tag will never be an alternative and will just be added to existing community sentences. The only way it could be used as an alternative is by letting people out of prison early - but that wouldn't be politically acceptable."