The Metropolitan Police will stop investigating some minor breaches of electronic tagging conditions, allowing offenders to escape arrest as officers prioritise more dangerous criminals. The force will no longer routinely investigate tagging breaches lasting less than an hour unless they involve high-risk offenders, such as domestic abusers, or there is evidence of a crime.
The move means offenders who might previously have faced arrest over breaches of their court-imposed conditions could avoid immediate police action. The Met said officers were being distracted by a surge in low-level infringements, including offenders stepping outside their homes for a cigarette in breach of a curfew.
Focus on High-Risk Offenders
The tags can enforce curfews, monitor movements around the clock and ensure offenders stay away from victims or designated exclusion zones. Those released on licence must also comply with conditions such as attending appointments with probation officers. Breaches can result in a return to prison.
However, the Met said it would now focus its resources on cases where offenders posed the greatest risk to the public. A spokesman said: "To best protect the public, those pressures cannot always fall on policing, and certainly not without prioritisation. Offenders who are high risk, such as domestic abusers, are a priority."
Pressure on the Criminal Justice System
The decision comes amid mounting pressure on the criminal justice system following the Government's early-release scheme, which has seen thousands of prisoners released into the community. Some 4,500 prisoners are due to be freed early by next June, with 1,350 already released this month.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, warned earlier this month that officers were dealing with more than 100 tagging breaches a week, alongside two or three cases of offenders released early from prison who had to be arrested and returned to jail. He added: "Where there is a risk to the public, particularly if someone is breaching conditions designed to protect a victim, we will absolutely respond."
Rising Recalls to Prison
The force stressed that all breaches would be reviewed to ensure there were no safeguarding risks. The move has been acknowledged by domestic abuse campaigners, who said limited police resources meant officers had to concentrate on the most serious cases.
Hetti Barkworth-Nanton, chairman of the charity Refuge, said the priority must be to deal with offenders who breach exclusion or restriction zones designed to protect victims. She said: "When are we going to grip the fact that these offenders need a specific set of measures for safely managing them in the community, and design them from scratch rather than trying to take generic offender conditions and tweak them?"
The policy comes as the number of prisoners recalled to jail continues to rise. The Telegraph reported that nearly half of the prison places freed up by early releases had been filled again within 10 days, as the number of offenders recalled to custody increased by 10%. The number recalled after the first group of 700 prisoners were released early rose from 380 in the previous week to 420, with police required to arrest them.
A report by the Institute for Government published this month found that the surge in recalls was driven largely by breaches of licence conditions rather than further offending. Many involved relatively minor infringements, including missed appointments. In 2025, there were 74 recalls for every 100 former prisoners supervised by probation in the community, compared with 35 in 2021. Only 16 of those 74 recalls were because an offender had been charged with another crime.
The Ministry of Justice said the Government had inherited a prison system "on the brink of collapse". A spokesman said: "We will never jeopardise public safety. To manage offenders out on licence, we are rolling out the toughest ever controls, including world-first restriction zones, the largest expansion of electronic tagging, and giving victims a say in licence conditions."
