Government says GPS tagging cuts reoffending – but Bucks VAWG campaigner raises concerns
Lisa Squire's daughter Libby was raped and murdered by a man with a history of sexual offences, and she worries dangerous individuals could be released too early
A government report has claimed reoffending by burglars, robbers and thieves has been reduced by 20% through the use of GPS tracking tags.
The tags, which monitor offenders’ movements after prison release, allow police to compare their location data with unsolved crimes. Ministers say the technology deters reoffending, protects communities and supports smarter policing as part of the Government’s Plan for Change.
But Lisa Squire from High Wycombe, whose daughter Libby was raped and murdered in Hull in 2019, has raised serious concerns about applying the scheme to crimes involving violence against women and girls.
“For some perpetrators of crime, I think it’s a good idea because they don’t need to be sat in prison cells,” she said. “But for very many others, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Because I think we’ve got victims at risk again.”
She said tags could potentially help with acquisitive crime. “Burglars, for shop theft, for things like that where it’s more property that is being damaged rather than people, that could be a benefit,” she said. “But if a crime is committed against the person, then you need to make sure that that victim feels safe. And again, we’re looking at the perpetrator, not the victim.”
Ms Squire said she feared tags would not protect women from violent offenders. “By the time the tag has gone off and the police have been alerted and the police have come out, that perpetrator could easily have gone on to kill his victim,” she said. “There is no way on earth that the police are going to get there in time from the alert and we know we don’t have enough police officers.”
She also warned that offenders could exploit the system. “There’s nothing to say that if they’re only allowed to be in their street, that they’re not gonna go and kill someone walking past their front door,” she said. “If they are going to do it, they are going to do it and short of keeping them locked away in prison you are not going to stop it.”
On sentencing, Ms Squire said victims were being failed. “Rapists don’t get long sentences. If they’re behaving themselves in prison, are they going to be eligible for early release? A tag isn’t going to stop them,” she said. “It’s another slap in the face to victims.”
She called for a tougher approach to sex offences. “I absolutely do not think that any man convicted of any type of sexual offence, whether it’s a lower level or the top of the ladder, should ever be let out on a tag,” she said. “It is not normal behaviour. We need to understand why men do this, we need to stop men doing it and we need to imprison them. We need to punish them.”
Ms Squire also said the government’s pledge to end violence against women and girls was undermined by the tagging policy, as the risk to victims could be increased.
In response to some of the concerns raised, Prisons minister Lord James Timpson said: "t's a terrible crime that's affected all their family and what we need to do is to make sure that when people leave prison, we put all the support mechanisms in place to make sure that they don't reoffend.
"The crisis that we inherited in our justice system is one we have to tackle and we are tackling it because victims need to come first and one of our priorities, as you quite rightly say, is to halve the amount of women and girls who are victims of crime, and by addressing the crisis that we inherited, that's how we're gonna do it."