Met Police reduce enforcement of minor tag breaches
The Metropolitan Police are piloting reduced enforcement of minor electronic tag breaches to free officers, while prioritising high risk and persistent offenders.
How it was covered
- Sky News was the only channel found covering it.
- Channel 5, BBC News, BBC One, Channel 4, GB News and ITV: not found in tracked broadcasts.
The Full Story
A plain summary built from the channels that reported this story. Facts only one channel reported are attributed to it.
The Metropolitan Police is reducing enforcement action against lower level electronic tag breaches in a pilot intended to ease resourcing pressures, including those linked to the early prisoner release scheme. The force, the largest in the country, says officers will not respond to some minor breaches in the same way as before. That includes curfew breaches of under an hour, such as returning home 20 or 30 minutes late.
The force says this is a prioritisation exercise. High risk offenders, including domestic abusers and people who are persistently offending, will still be monitored and breaches enforced as before. In a statement, the Met said: "In the type of cases where breaches have previously not resulted in any consequence through the court system, we are working with partners to explore the most appropriate penalty or consequence so that police time can be focused where it has the greatest impact." It said that would free officers to focus on work that better protects the public, including high risk breaches.
The Met added: "Where offenders have briefly stepped outside for a cigarette or police are notified 19 hours later that they were 15 minutes late returning home, tying up several officers for hours is not the best use of resources." The change has limits. A notification does not always make clear whether an offender has just stepped outside or committed a further crime. On patrol with the force, officers looking for wanted offenders found some people could account for a tag breach, for example by saying they had been in hospital or outside for a cigarette. Others could not justify it, and arrests followed.
The operational change comes after Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley publicly warned about the impact of the early prisoner release scheme. He said the force was monitoring up to 100 to 110 tag breaches a day and was arresting two to three extra people per week as a result of the scheme. Against that background, the reduced enforcement of minor tag breaches is a significant shift in how the force uses its resources.
Key Claims
Claims reported during this story's coverage, grouped by how many channels reported each one. Select a dot to see the source excerpt.
| Claim |  |
|---|---|
| Only on one channel | |
| The Met commissioner said the force was monitoring up to 100 to 110 tag breaches a day. | |
| The Met is piloting reduced enforcement of lower-level tag breaches due to resourcing pressures, while saying high-risk offenders will be monitored and enforced as before. | |
Channel Perspectives
What each channel focused on, with key quotes.
Sky News led with the operational change as a significant development within wider pressure on the Met. It explained the threshold for minor breaches, read out the Met's justification and included caveats about not knowing whether a breach hides further offending. It also tied the pilot directly to Sir Mark Rowley's public warnings about the early prisoner release scheme.
- “the Metropolitan Police is reducing the enforcement of offenders who breach their tag conditions as authorities face additional pressures in the wake of the prisoner early release scheme”
- “the country's largest police force are piloting or trialing lower enforcement, reduced enforcement of lower level tag breaches because they say of their resourcing pressures”
- “Where offenders have briefly stepped outside for a cigarette or police are notified 19 hours later that they were 15 minutes late returning home, tying up several officers for hours is not the best use of resources.”
Who was on air
People and organisations each channel put on air while covering this story. Channels' own presenters and reporters are not listed. Names as transcribed, and the list can miss people.
Broadcast Timeline
News broadcasts tracked for this story, in time order.