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Tagging figures were wrong says Government |
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Wednesday, 16 January 2008 |
The number of Scots breaching electronic tagging orders actually fell 7.6 per cent last year, instead of rising by 61 per cent, according to revised figures published by the Government today.
The number of Scots breaching electronic tagging orders actually fell 7.6 per cent last year, instead of rising by 61 per cent, according to revised figures published by the Government today.
The Criminal Justice Social Work statistics published on 4 December last year mistakenly included instances where warning letters were sent to those on Restriction of Liberty Orders – a Level 2 breach – as well as the instances where a court appearance was required.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said a review would be undertaken with Serco, the company responsible for managing, to ensure such an error does not occur again.
MacAskill said the revised figures show that there is a genuine role for electronic tagging as a non-custodial disposal option:
“This is clearly a serious error and led to accusations at the time that electronic monitoring is not working. It does however provide further evidence that community penalties can play an increasing part in our progressive penal policy. We already know that reconviction rates are much lower for offenders who are sentenced to Community Sentence Orders as opposed to those given short prison sentences.
“A coherent penal policy must encompass a range of appropriate punishments, including prison for serious and dangerous criminals as well as tough community penalties for less serious offenders. It's therefore vital that we make the range of community penalties available to the courts as robust as possible to ensure they can be used with confidence in all appropriate cases.”
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