Nobody knows for certain how many people ordered to be tracked are walking around without a tag
England and Wales has quietly doubled the number of people under electronic monitoring in five years, reaching 28,700 individuals managed in the community rather than behind bars — a policy born of necessity as prisons strain beyond capacity. Yet the UK's National Audit Office has surfaced a troubling paradox: a system designed to extend the reach of justice may, in its current state, be losing sight of nearly a quarter of those it is meant to watch. When the machinery of accountability cannot account for itself, the promise of reform becomes a risk to the very public it is meant to protect.
- Nearly 9,000 people ordered by courts to wear electronic tags may be walking free and unmonitored — and authorities cannot agree on the exact number, which is itself a measure of the disorder.
- Contractor Serco struggled through its first year with delayed fittings, missed breach notifications, and a backlog of 7,000 outstanding visits, and even after improvement could only successfully tag 62 percent of those it attended.
- A shortfall of 2,200 probation officers means the human infrastructure needed to respond to breaches and manage caseloads is already overwhelmed before any expansion begins.
- The government is pressing forward with plans to tag 22,000 new offenders annually by 2027, backed by £175 million in funding — but the NAO warns that money cannot substitute for the governance and data systems that are currently failing.
- Reform advocates caution that using tagging as a pressure valve for prison overcrowding, without clear standards or safeguards, risks both public safety and public trust in the justice system.
England and Wales has doubled its electronic tagging programme over five years, reaching 28,700 monitored individuals, with government plans to add roughly 22,000 newly tagged offenders each year from 2027 onward. The logic is pragmatic: divert pressure from overcrowded prisons by managing more people in the community. But the National Audit Office has issued a serious warning — the system is already failing under its current weight.
The most alarming finding is one of basic visibility. As of March 2026, authorities were still auditing around 8,900 cases to determine how many people required to wear tags simply weren't. The Ministry of Justice offered a lower estimate of 5,450, but the disagreement between agencies is itself revealing — no one knows with certainty how many court-ordered tags are missing from wrists. That gap in knowledge is the programme's central vulnerability.
Contractor Serco compounded the problem during its early months, failing to tag people on schedule and neglecting to notify officials promptly when breaches occurred. A backlog of 7,000 outstanding visits had accumulated by October 2024. Even after performance improved, Serco was successfully fitting tags on only 62 percent of those it visited — meaning more than a third of appointments ended without a tag in place.
Underpinning these operational failures is a staffing crisis in the probation service, which is short approximately 2,200 officers. Without the people needed to respond to breaches and manage caseloads, expansion risks outpacing the system's capacity to function at all. NAO head Gareth Davies was unambiguous: electronic monitoring is a necessary tool, but it is not currently working well enough to be safely scaled.
The government has pointed to inherited backlogs, a near-50 percent rise in installation rates, and combined investments of £800 million across monitoring and probation as evidence of progress. But critics, including the Prison Reform Trust, caution that treating tagging as a cure for overcrowding — without fixing the foundations — risks wasting public money and undermining confidence in justice itself.
England and Wales has doubled the number of people under electronic monitoring in five years to 28,700, and the government wants to push that number higher—adding roughly 22,000 newly tagged offenders each year starting in 2027. The plan is straightforward: ease the crushing pressure on prisons by managing more criminals in the community instead of behind bars. But the UK's National Audit Office has issued a stark warning: the system is already straining under its current load, and expanding it without serious fixes will endanger the public.
The core problem is invisible. As of March 2026, authorities were still trying to figure out how many people who were supposed to be tagged simply weren't. The Prison and Probation Service was reviewing roughly 8,900 cases—nearly a quarter of all those required to wear monitors—to count the unmonitored offenders. The Ministry of Justice offered a lower figure of around 5,450, but the disagreement itself reveals the chaos: nobody knows for certain how many people ordered by courts to be tracked are walking around without a tag. That uncertainty is the real danger.
The contractor responsible for much of the tagging work, Serco, stumbled badly in its early months. Between August 2024 and July 2025, people weren't getting tagged on schedule, and when breaches occurred—when someone removed their tag or went where they shouldn't—officials weren't being told quickly enough. The backlog of visits needed to fit, check, or remove tags swelled to 7,000 by October 2024. Even as performance improved, the numbers told a troubling story: in February 2026, Serco met its target for timely visits but only managed to actually fit tags on 62 percent of the people it showed up to see. Two attempts, and still more than a third walked away untagged.
Beyond the contractor problems sits a deeper staffing crisis. The probation service is short roughly 2,200 officers as of March 2026—a gap that makes it nearly impossible to monitor the existing caseload properly, let alone handle a surge of new cases. The NAO concluded that further expansion would be neither efficient nor effective unless the Ministry of Justice and Prison and Probation Service fixed the underlying weaknesses in how they manage data, coordinate across agencies, and respond to problems.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, was direct: electronic monitoring is essential to managing prison pressure, but it isn't working. The government has allocated up to £175 million to fund the expansion through 2029, but money alone won't solve a system that doesn't know who it's supposed to be monitoring. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the public accounts committee, put it plainly: the government doesn't know how many people should be tagged but aren't, and it doesn't have the capacity to respond quickly when someone breaches their conditions. That creates unknown risks to public safety.
Pia Sinha of the Prison Reform Trust warned against treating electronic monitoring as a cure-all for overcrowding. Expanding tagging without fixing probation staffing, without clear safeguards, and without understanding what success actually looks like risks wasting money and eroding public confidence in the system. The government has pushed back, noting it inherited a failing system with record backlogs and has since raised installation rates by nearly 50 percent. They're investing £100 million in electronic monitoring and £700 million in probation, and they're hiring more trainee officers. But the NAO's message is clear: those investments need to fix what's broken before the system is asked to do more.
Citas Notables
Electronic monitoring is central to managing pressures on prisons, but it is not working effectively, creating risks to public protection.— Gareth Davies, head of the National Audit Office
The government does not know for certain how many people who should be tagged are being left unmonitored, nor does it have the information or capacity to respond quickly to breaches.— Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the public accounts committee
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does it matter that we don't know exactly how many people are unmonitored? Isn't the gap between 5,450 and 8,900 just a counting problem?
It's not just counting. If you're a victim of someone on a monitoring order, or a community member, you need to know whether the system is actually watching the people it's supposed to watch. That gap—that uncertainty—means nobody can say with confidence whether public safety is being protected.
But the government says performance has improved since those early Serco problems. Doesn't that suggest the system is self-correcting?
Improvement from crisis levels isn't the same as working well. Serco went from a 7,000-case backlog to under 400, which sounds good until you learn they're only successfully tagging 62 percent of the people they visit. The system is limping forward, not running smoothly.
What would actually need to happen for this expansion to be safe?
You'd need to know exactly who should be tagged and confirm they are tagged. You'd need enough probation staff to actually monitor them—not just fit the devices. You'd need contractors who can do the work reliably. And you'd need systems that talk to each other so a breach gets reported immediately, not days later. Right now, none of that is guaranteed.
Is the government's £175 million investment enough?
Money helps, but it's not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is governance, data quality, and staff. You can't throw money at a system that doesn't know what it's monitoring or who's supposed to be doing the monitoring. That's a structural problem, not a budget problem.
So what happens if they expand anyway?
You get more people in the community under orders they may not actually be following, with less certainty about whether anyone's watching, and fewer staff to respond when something goes wrong. The risk isn't theoretical—it's about real people, real victims, real breaches that might not get caught.