HC Deb 30 October 1997 vol 299 c838W
Mr. Clappison

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of(a) the average cost per case of electronic tagging and (b) the costs to the police of dealing with an offender who breaks the terms of the tagging. [12732]

Ms Quin

(a) Based on the experience of the first year of the trials of curfew orders with electronic monitoring, the estimated cost per order for a national roll-out was estimated to be about £2,300. Better estimates based on the second year of the trials will be published shortly.

(b) An offender who breaches the terms of the order is returned to court by the electronic monitoring contractors and the police are not involved. However, if an offender then fails to appear in court, a warrant for arrest is issued. Too few such cases have arisen during the current trials of electronic monitoring to enable a meaningful estimate of police costs to be made.