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UK: Tagging extended to children

01 January 2001

The Home Office announced an extension of electronically monitored tagging to 10-15-year old offenders in November, under Section 43 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997. The tags will be used to extend curfew orders by keeping convicted children off the streets following pilot schemes in Greater Manchester and Norfolk. In the pilot studies 155 curfew orders were imposed in the two areas between March 1998 and February 2000. The majority of the orders were applied to 14- and 15-year olds (none were made on 10-year olds) and 10 curfew orders applied to girls.
The measures against child offenders were justified by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, who argued that tagging would :"... help break patterns of offending by keeping young offenders off the streets...". However, Harry Fletcher, of the National Association of Probation Officers, disputed Straw's claims telling the Guardian newspaper that: "Tagging has no effect on crime or criminality and there is no proven deterrent effect. The danger is that younger children won't understand it and that older ones will see it as a trophy. What is needed is supervision and guidance, not electronic gimmicks."
Powers to impose the curfew orders will be given to the courts early in this year, at a time when the rapidly deteriorating prison system has seen the number of child prisoners double. In a parliamentary answer the Home Office said that 1,086 boys aged between 15 and 16 were remanded into prisons in the six months since last April. A decade ago, under the Criminal Justice Act 1991, it was promised that custody for boys would be reduced before being abolished. The Home Office predicts that about 1,200 curfew orders will be imposed throughout England and Wales at a cost of £1.8m.

"Electronically monitored curfew for 10- to 15-year-olds -report of the pilot" Robin Elliot, Jennifer Airs, Claire Easton and Ruth Lewis, Research, Development and Statistics Directorate (Home Office) 2000