Justice Ministry disputes figure on unmonitored electronic tags in England and Wales

On 9 July 2026, the Ministry of Justice said its review put the number of unmonitored electronic tags in England and Wales at 5,450. The ministry said some expired orders had been incorrectly recorded as active, overstating the number of electronic monitoring cases with no equipment assigned. The review used manual case checks and reconciliation against supplier and court administrative datasets. Those incorrect records were removed from the data, and July 2026 official statistics will separately show monitoring status for all electronic monitoring orders, including why equipment is not in place and where installed equipment is not transmitting data.

A National Audit Office report due on 10 July 2026 referred to 8,900 active electronic monitoring cases, or 24% of those required to be tagged, as under review to identify how many were unmonitored. That figure is more than the ministry’s lower count. The programme has been in use since 1999 for court bail, community sentences, home detention curfew and licence cases.

The number of people fitted with electronic monitoring tags rose from around 10,000 in 2020 to 28,700 in March 2026, while efforts to update the system in 2024 created significant tagging backlogs. In November 2025, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee said electronic monitoring could double once the Sentencing Bill becomes law, and that the Probation Service would need major new funding, staffing and training to cope. It also said current private contractors may not be able to absorb the increase and raised ethical concerns in some uses, particularly immigration bail.

In 2022, the Public Accounts Committee said HM Prison and Probation Service’s tagging transformation programme wasted £98 million of taxpayers’ money, when around 15,300 offenders were tagged in March 2022. It also said the service expected to spend £1.2 billion on an enhanced electronic monitoring service between 2021-22 and 2030-31. Evidence on electronic monitoring’s effect on reoffending is limited. The ministry says the tool can improve offender management and public protection.