Letter:Time to abandon tagging

Paul Cavadino
Saturday 14 September 1996 23:02 BST
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

There is little evidence to justify a rethink of Labour's previous opposition to electronic tagging ("Labour ready for rethink on tagging", 8 September).

In the first year of the current trials, only 100 offenders were tagged in three large court areas. The Home Office has had to extend the catchment area and the duration of the experiment to increase the number of offenders tagged. The average cost of the first 100 orders was around pounds 18,000, which is 30 times the cost of supervising someone on probation or community service for a similar length of time.

In mid-July, 53 of the 100 tagged offenders were being monitored and three orders had been quashed on appeal. Of the remaining 44 orders, 29 had been completed and 15 revoked. In comparison, 80 per cent of the 46,000 probation orders and 75 per cent of the 48,000 community service orders each year are completed without revocation. There is a strong case for abandoning tagging and switching resources to strengthening more constructive options such as community service, probation and supervision orders.

Paul Cavadino

Penal Affairs Consortium

London SW9

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in