More than 5,000 offenders in England and Wales were left unmonitored during the first half of this year because probation staff failed to install electronic tags, an independent report has found. Additionally, nearly 1,600 tags experienced signal loss for over two weeks due to technical faults, highlighting what an independent thinktank describes as a crisis within the probation system.
The Institute for Government (IfG) has released a comprehensive report detailing widespread failings within the probation service, concluding that a severe lack of staff has led to "rationing probation supervision". This situation, the IfG states, renders sentences imposed by the courts "essentially a fiction" for a significant proportion of offenders.
The report warns that once the 2026 Sentencing Act is fully implemented – an act designed to reduce the custodial period for many sentences – most offenders will spend the final third of their sentence on licence without any active supervision. The IfG argues that this development "risks further undermining public trust in the criminal justice system and making sentences even more convoluted and opaque, including to victims."
Cassia Rowland, an associate director at the Institute for Government and the report's author, underscored the severe impact of these issues on frontline staff. "It’s hard to set out just how demoralised and unhappy a lot of probation staff are," Ms Rowland stated. "They feel everything is really chaotic, all of these changes are being flung on to them, they’re worried about their personal safety and the public protection risk of the people they’re managing."
Ms Rowland further elaborated on the disconnect between judicial sentencing and actual punishment. "The sentences courts are imposing are having less and less relevance to the time people are actually serving," she explained. "The situation we’ve reached now is if you get given a six-year sentence, you’re most likely going to be spending two years in prison, two years on probation and then two years with conditions that no one is monitoring or enforcing. That’s just not a six-year sentence."
Among the report's most significant criticisms of the Probation Service was its handling of electronic monitoring, which the IfG found to be "performing poorly and failing to meet demand". Data collected between January and April revealed that over 5,000 individuals who were subject to electronic tagging orders were not tagged, representing 15 per cent of all such orders. Furthermore, almost 1,600 people wearing an electronic tag did not transmit a signal to the monitoring system for a period of two weeks, primarily due to technical malfunctions or uncharged devices.
These systemic issues have directly impacted the quality of probation services, with the report noting that not a single probation delivery unit inspected in 2024 or 2025 received a rating above "requires improvement". Two-thirds of these units were categorised as "inadequate".
The IfG report, which draws its conclusions from public data and extensive interviews with frontline probation staff, also identified broader failures beyond public safety concerns. It highlighted insufficient action to reduce reoffending rates, with prisoners often being let down by a system unable to provide adequate support. "People have told me stories of referring prisoners on to substance misuse programmes and their sentence ends before they reach the front of the waiting list," Ms Rowland recounted. "The system is not functioning to try to help people."
In response to its findings, the Institute for Government urged the government to implement several key reforms. These include a steady increase in the number of probation workers, the reintroduction of home detention orders to help manage the burgeoning prison population, and the establishment of a "transparent and understandable" sentencing model. Such a model, the report suggested, should explicitly define time spent in prison and time supervised in the community, eliminating licence periods without active supervision.
The report also weighed in on recent political decisions impacting prison management. It noted that efforts to stabilise the prison population risked being "undone" by decisions such as those made by Andy Burnham, who announced several exemptions to the early release scheme following public criticism.
At the beginning of October, approximately 700 individuals were released early from prison as part of emergency measures, forming the initial cohort of an anticipated 4,500 releases. This move was prompted by prison facilities nearing maximum capacity. Concerns were immediately raised, with some released prisoners expressing expectations of quickly returning to custody due to homelessness and anticipated breaches of licence conditions. The IfG report reinforced these concerns, stating that administrative recalls for issues unrelated to new offences have "skyrocketed" in recent years.
Despite the government's assertion that all released offenders would be subject to stringent monitoring, including an expansion of electronic tagging, the IfG report raises significant doubts about the already overstretched Probation Service’s capacity to cope. "Tagging more people is also likely to substantially increase the workload for probation practitioners, when they are already short-staffed and struggling," the report concluded.
"This absolutely raises alarm bells," Ms Rowland stated, expressing frustration over the situation. "It’s very frustrating because victims are being made promises which potentially the system can’t meet."
A government spokesperson responded to the report, stating: "We inherited a justice system in crisis after years of underinvestment and are taking the steps needed to fix it. This government is overseeing the biggest ever expansion of electronic monitoring in British history, making record investment into the Probation Service and community punishment, and recruiting thousands of new probation officers."
"We are pulling every lever to better protect victims and tagging is just one tool we use to keep the public safe," the spokesperson added. "Offenders can face being housed in approved premises, curfews, mandatory meeting with probation officers, no contact orders, requirements on where to live and the threat of immediate recall to prison."
