Helen Schofield and Richard Garside.

Q7 The Chair: Welcome to this second session of the Select Committee’s inquiry into electronic monitoring. We are delighted to have our two witnesses before us and, to kick us off, I would be grateful if you could both just introduce yourselves to the Committee.

Richard Garside: I am the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

Helen Schofield: I am the chief executive of the Probation Institute.

The Chair: Thank you both very much indeed for coming. As I said to our previous witnesses, our time is a little bit tight today, so if there are things at the end of the session you wish you had said and you have not, feel free please to write to us about it, and I hope you will not mind if there are one or two supplementary questions we may send to you following the meeting. I am going to turn to Lord Tope to kick us off.

Q8 Lord Tope: Mr Garside, I know you sat through the previous session because you were in front of us; I do not know whether Ms Schofield heard it or not. I want to start with the same question we asked previously: what is the purpose of electronic monitoring?

Richard Garside: If you look at the purpose in law, electronic monitoring is treated as a form of custody. You can see that, for example, if you are bailed under electronic monitoring, the time you have spent on bail contributes to a reduction in the sentence if you are then convicted. It is not the same amount: I think the precise measure is that every nine hours is equivalent to half a day’s imprisonment, so it is treated in law as a form of custody. As the previous speakers pointed out, it has quite significant potential punitive impact. It does restrict your liberty. It can be a form of control. It is sometimes felt that it can be a form of rehabilitation; I am not sure that there is much evidence to suggest currently that that is the case, but that might be something that we want to explore.

I think it is also worth noting, quickly and finally, the change in the composition of how tags are being used. If you go back several years, around half of all tags being issued were effectively a court sentence; the equivalent of tagging in the community. That is currently only about 15%, so the majority of tags now are given out for bail conditions, they are given out post release, and increasingly they are being used as a form of immigration enforcement. I know that is not the purpose of this committee, but it is worth pointing out that almost half of all GPS or tracking tagging is now basically being used for immigration enforcement.

So, there has been a significant shift in the way that tags are being used, and I think that matters, because if the Government are suggesting that they want to use tags a lot more as an enforcement of a community sentence or community-based tagging, they are starting from a very low base in terms of how they are currently being used. Given the amount of inertia in the system, I suspect, therefore, that it will take several years to feed through into more use, though, as I think Alex Chalk also pointed out, a lot of that is going to be about the confidence in the system; that it can actually work effectively for sentences.

Helen Schofield: I think it is useful to look at the potential and wider intended purposes as well as the functional purposes, if you like, so I think, yes, one purpose is the alternative to custody. A purpose of that, of course, is to reduce numbers in prison. That has been the purpose in different jurisdictions and is still described as one of the purposes. Changing behavioural patterns is also described as a purpose, I think, although I do not think there is sufficient evidence. A further described purpose is the protection of the public, particularly in relation to the location of individuals. So, there are, if you like, wider purposes as well as the specific, immediate, functional purposes—what does it do, as opposed to what are we trying to achieve.

Q9 Baroness Buscombe: If I may ask both of you, how does our use of electronic monitoring compare internationally, particularly given that the Government are looking to developments in technology and also comparative studies to improve the effectiveness of electronic monitoring? Helen, would you like to start, please?

Helen Schofield: As far as the written research across different jurisdictions is used here, the uses vary considerably across different jurisdictions. In Germany, for instance, it is not every state that uses it; in the Netherlands, the probation service is very differently structured. It is very difficult to draw immediate comparisons between the way we use electronic monitoring in England and Wales and other jurisdictions. If we look at wider jurisdictions, the most significant theme running through the use is the importance of integrating electronic monitoring into supervision and consent and not losing sight of the rehabilitative purpose. That is widely described in the European models and less significantly described in the models in England and Wales.

Baroness Buscombe: Right, but in Turkey, for example, they use more voice and facial recognition and GPS tracking software on mobile phones. Do you think that is the way forward?

Helen Schofield: No, we think that electronic monitoring should always be integrated as a means of enabling supervision—within supervision. The risks of extending the use of electronic monitoring for surveillance seem to us to undermine the potential for using it to reduce spending and achieve rehabilitation.

Baroness Buscombe: Richard, would you like to say something on this point?

Richard Garside: Within the United Kingdom—of course, there is a separate jurisdiction in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as you know—certainly England and Wales is ahead of Scotland and Northern Ireland in its use of different forms of electronic monitoring. Indeed, it has historically been a higher user than a number of other European jurisdictions. The way that we have tended to roll out electronic monitoring has also differed. We have relied very heavily on some significant private sector contractors who effectively run the whole system. As you will know, in a lot of European jurisdictions it is much more closely integrated with probation run by the state and there is a clearer integration. I think that has caused problems. The probation inspectorate, among others, has highlighted the problems of the fragmentation of the system, and indeed Lord Hogan-Howe as well referenced that the system is currently rather fragmented.

There are also some interesting things that we do not currently do. You mentioned voice recognition, facial recognition and the use of mobile phones. I am not an expert in this area, in terms of the tech, but given that most of us these days have mobile phones that often have tracking software on them, if only so that our family members know what we are up to or where we are, it does not strike me as being a huge leap of imagination to think it might be possible to use that kind of technology, rather than the very expensive GPS tagging technology. At least, it is worth exploring. Also, in America, some states have explored the use of what is called bilateral monitoring, where victims also have access to the information about an individual who is under a tag, which you can imagine potentially, if you are a victim of stalking or domestic violence, might be considered useful. I have some significant questions about that, not least because I think it can also create huge sources of alarm and distress if you are just tracking this individual all day.

Picking up on a point that Lord Hogan-Howe made, data sharing between the tagging and the police is currently very primitive, to put it bluntly. It is by email and it is very after the event. Again, it does not strike me as being the craziest idea to ask if there are ways, as Lord Hogan-Howe was saying, that more real-time tagging could be used for law enforcement purposes. The problem there, of course, as both he and Alex Chalk pointed out, is that it comes with high staffing demands and the risk of false positives—chasing down an individual who is just on his way to Tesco, even though he has just brushed past a school, for example, strikes me as being an issue which is also important to consider.

Q10 The Chair: I want to pick up on a point you sort of alluded to, which is that in our previous session we perhaps focused rather too much on the issue of the potential problems between the police and the Probation Service with the private sector provider of the data, and not enough on the point you just very briefly mentioned, which is that liaison between the police and the Probation Service. Does either of you have any quick comment on whether we need to do more about that, as well as address the issue about the link with the private sector provider?

Richard Garside: Yes and, as was mentioned earlier, there are obviously examples of that in relation to dealing with potentially dangerous or high-risk individuals. The crucial question in all of this is: who is leading this process? The criminal justice system is tiny compared to the NHS, for example but within the criminal justice system as a whole, the police are a very large institution. They are much better resourced, for example, than probation. They often have significant legal powers that probation does not have. If we are exploring ways that probation and the police can work more effectively together—and it is difficult to argue that that is not, in some circumstances, a good idea—we do need to make sure that probation does not just end up being the willing little helpers of the police. They need to be equal partners in that process because, at the end of the day, when it comes to enforcement of court orders and enforcement of post-release conditions, probation has the expertise. It may not have the staff—there is a real issue about staffing in probation—but it has the expertise and the organisational culture, frankly, to do that in many cases better than the police.

Helen Schofield: I agree with Richard’s point. The critical relationship between the police and probation is around risk. It is less significantly important around lower-risk cases. It is important to remember that the purposes of policing and the purposes of probation are very different. I would very much want to encourage the improved, strengthened relationship in areas of high risk, but not to see that widely extended into areas where monitoring is used in lower-risk cases.

Q11 Lord Dubs: Does EM help to reduce reoffending and, if it does not, is there any purpose to it, in your experience?

Richard Garside: At the risk of having a boring history lesson, just very quickly let us remind ourselves that use of EM for curfew tagging—enforcement of curfew—was introduced in 1989, at least as a legal power. It started being used nationally from late 1999, with GPS tagging from 2018 and alcohol tagging in 2020. Lord Hogan-Howe pointed out that the evidence base is—I think this was the way he said it—quite pilot-ish. I have always found it quite striking that, given the amount of investment that has gone into this and the hopes that have been placed in it, it is a technology which is very underresearched in terms of its actual impact.

Alex Chalk mentioned some interesting research that came out from the MoJ—academic research done by independent academics—just earlier this year. It found that the radio frequency curfew technology—the old technology—did seem to show a lowered incidence of reoffending among those under those tags. It was not a massive difference, but none the less it was a measurable difference. There was also a lower number of reoffences. There was a big question, though, about whether the effect of tagging waned over time—so, immediately you are on a tag, maybe in the short term it might affect behaviour, but that tends to wane over time.

For me, that points to two things. First, if we are going to continue to use tagging and expand it, we just need to have better research and better evidence of its effectiveness because, not least, that will help guide good implementation. It also emphasises the importance of connecting the use of this technology with effective probation work. If you are just treating it as a stand-alone device and you think it is going to somehow automatically change behaviour simply by having something slapped on your ankle, that is for the birds. The risk is that we will go down a route of spending a lot of money, built with a lot of hopes that it will work at a time when the prison population is going through the roof. It needs to work, actually, so it needs to be based on evidence, it needs to be based on effective practice, and these things need to be combined.

Helen Schofield: The evidence has pointed—as Richard said, it is varied—towards behavioural change: towards people changing their patterns of behaviour because they cannot do what they would otherwise have done. There is also some evidence that that is more impactive around younger individuals, so the potential for that waning is real. I do not think we know enough about the reduction of offending, but I would absolutely say that, in terms of reducing the numbers of people in prison, there must be potential benefit, not only in cost but also in reducing the very harmful impact of prison on individuals. Of course, what we do not know is what the long-term effects of that will be, but if we can reduce the harmful impact of custody on individuals, then potentially we are also reducing their risk of future offending. From the point of view of the reduction of the numbers in prison, yes, there is definitely some benefit in continuing to work closely, and I would say that there are there are benefits in the public protection of individuals.

Q12 Lord Bach: What considerations are made with regard to individual differences when using electronic monitoring? I give as an example a description given by a previous speaker before this committee, who said that electronic monitoring equipment is “designed by men for adult men and for Western markets”, and that electronic monitoring regimes do not fully consider the different circumstances and needs of all wearers. One realises a balance has to be kept here, obviously, but I wonder what your views are, as experts in this area. Can I start with you, Helen, please, on that?

Helen Schofield: Yes. I would agree with the observation in your previous session. I do not think we know sufficiently. The areas in which we ought to be looking are very definitely gender and the impact on women. Numbers are smaller, of course. We do not know sufficiently about the impact in terms of race, and I have certainly never seen much evidence in relation to disability, so there is definitely a need, if we are to expand this, to look much more closely at individual differences. This comes down to the assessment, and it is one of the reasons why we are moving very definitely within the Probation Institute to thinking that the Probation Service in England and Wales should take a much greater responsibility, integrating electronic monitoring into the practice of probation supervision and the assessment undertaken by probation officers. I think we are all aware as well that there was a recent and tragic case—a very serious incident—which failed to take into account the individual difference, if you like, of there being a woman and three young children in the home of an individual who was given a curfew without sufficient assessment, with disastrous consequences. So, yes, it is a hugely important issue.

Richard Garside: I agree with much of that. At the end of the day, having a tag is a very binary thing—you either have one or you do not—and humans are very complex. Again, that is another argument for ensuring that, whatever you do with tagging, it is connected with effective relational probation practice, so it can pick up on some of the complexity of all people. There is a lack of impact monitoring on key groups—children, young people, by gender, by ethnicity—and there is a bit of a commitment to improve that, but we definitely need some sensible monitoring.

There are some really practical challenges here. As Helen pointed out, what do you do with this situation if you are going gung-ho: “We need more and more community-based enforcement through tagging”? The individual under the tag is therefore, by definition, likely to be held in the home for many more hours than he—it is usually “he”—is used to. What happens if they have a tendency to get a bit physical with the wife or girlfriend when they are angry, though it does not appear on their criminal record—if they are known for something else, but they have a tendency towards violence? How you deal with a situation where you are effectively locking down the person under the tag with potential victims is an area that we have to continue to think about.

It might exacerbate other forms of family conflict, with young people under a tag who are used to being out on the streets quite a lot. Frankly, if they are living in small flats in London, maybe their parents are happy for them to be out as well, because at least they are not in the flat creating noise and nuisance. What happens if you are saying to a young man, “You are going to have to stay in the flat”? That might help break some of the patterns around gang affiliation, for example, but if you are a member of the family, that could be a really big deal, because suddenly there is a big, hulking 17 year-old bouncing around the flat, and there are only two bedrooms for five people. So, there are all sorts of practical considerations around how tagging affects different individuals differently, which is why it is really important that it is connected with effective probation, monitoring and research.

The Chair: We know that current public opinion suggests that “Lock ‘em up” is what people are more interested in. Members of the public would begin to wonder about the long list of factors you are going to take into account about the individual offender, the particular tag they are going to wear, their family circumstances, what job they have got and so on. Giving a huge amount of consideration to the circumstances of the offender, which would never happen if you say you are just going to send them off to prison, where none of these factors appear to be taken into account, is going to be quite a difficult public sell, is it not?

Richard Garside: Maybe. I am not a politician but I am in a room of politicians and I heard a very experienced politician in the earlier session making some of these points. One thing that Alex Chalk pointed out was his example from New York, where he saw a judge—I am sorry, I did not actually catch their name—and I think the term he used was that she had enormous probation resources to draw on. We do not have enormous probation resources to draw on in this country. We have a shortfall of maybe 10,000 staff currently in the probation system.

The Government say they want to spend maybe £700 million more in the final year of the current spending review cycle, but a lot of that probably risks being eaten up by electronic monitoring and other technologies if we are not careful. So, yes, if the public are sceptical about the capacity of the justice system to deliver, I share their scepticism. There is a real issue and a challenge here for the Government to ensure that we have an effective, well-resourced, well-run, well-organised justice system across the board, and then maybe the public will think, “Yeah, okay, I can see that this is actually quite a good system”.

The Chair: Let us pick that up with Baroness Hughes.

Q13 Baroness Hughes of Stretford: I am interested in whether you think that the Probation Service is ready to manage an increased number of people subject to electronic monitoring in the light of the independent sentencing review. When I say “ready”, I am thinking not just in terms of staffing numbers, although that is important—the BBC, on the back of the Leveson report, has estimated a shortfall of 10,000 staff to supervise offenders in the community—but also in terms of the training required for this specific type of work. Thirdly, and this is particularly to Ms Schofield, is the Probation Service ready, culturally, for this role? It seems to me to be heavily dependent on being able to accept a very stringent regime of surveillance, monitoring and conditions, including recall, in order to be an effective alternative to prison, and being able to make that case to the public, particularly, and to reduce reoffending. I am sorry that that is a bit bitty, but is the Probation Service ready, in terms of numbers of staff, training and culturally? Do you want to start, Ms Schofield?

Helen Schofield: I suppose the first answer has to be, “Not yet”. In terms of numbers, there is a shortfall currently, but it is building quickly. The shortfall is not an inevitability; it can be addressed. As for training, let me say first that were the Probation Service to become more closely integrated with electronic monitoring, there would need to be serious consideration about what models there might be. One could transfer the whole responsibility for probation to the Probation Service within HMPPS. Even if you did that, I think you would still want to contract externally for equipment, at the very least, so we would still be looking at an integrated model.

My view is that were the Probation Service to take over responsibility, with contracted-out equipment, you would need to introduce an additional role within the Probation Service that would be responsible for much of the work that the private sector currently carries out, in terms of the initial assessment and the initial monitoring. All the more challenging and complex decisions about suitability in certain cases and breach and so forth would fall back to the supervising officer, but you would need a team of people managing the process, as well as the agency managing the equipment. I do not think the Probation Service has that staff group at the moment, but it could have. There is no doubt, and this is really important, that if the Probation Service does not grip this, then the increased use of—

Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Sorry, I am missing some of this. It was not clear. Could you repeat the last sentence?

Helen Schofield: An additional staff role would need to be introduced within the Probation Service, which would need to be specifically trained to deal with the processes that are currently within the private sector, not an exact replica. The probation officer’s responsibility must be to continue to supervise in a rehabilitative relationship. There is a great deal of concern within the Probation Service that if electronic monitoring became their responsibility, it would completely undermine rehabilitation. I do not think that is necessary, and I think there is a growing view that it is not necessary.

It is about training. It is also about who you recruit, because future generations of the Probation Service are going to need to be—and inevitably will be, because they will be younger and much more tech-focused—much more comfortable with artificial intelligence and the use of complex technology. I do not think that is impossible or irresistible. I think we are looking at a rather different frame of reference for the probation officer, notwithstanding the importance of rehabilitation. It is a very complex challenge, but the important point here is that if the Probation Service does not move into this area, then the increase of electronic monitoring, artificial intelligence and so forth is likely to undermine the role of the Probation Service anyway. I think we are at a moment in history when the Probation Service needs to really look forward to see what is the overall and bigger responsibility of its practitioners and its teams as a whole. There is a big challenge here and it will not be achieved tomorrow.

Baroness Hughes of Stretford: I want to pick you up on something and, in saying this, I am speaking as a former probation officer, albeit many years ago. I have never understood the distinction that some officers— perhaps many officers—make between working with an offender towards rehabilitation and working with an offender towards putting in place the stringent conditions that you need if you are going to effectively reduce their reoffending in the future. Those two things are very much tied together.

It is about a relationship with the offender—and I do not see why it cannot be completely up front—that says, “Right, there are certain things you are not going to be allowed to do, and I am not going to let you do them, but within that framework, we want to work to support you to stop your offending”. You seemed to suggest that some probation officers shy away from that overt role in correctional services, in containment and so on, which I would argue is essential if electronic tagging is going to achieve its potential in rehabilitation and reducing offending.

Helen Schofield: I think there is an important concern that is shared by probation officers about the balance between increased controls and the emphasis on technology and surveillance on one hand, and the rehabilitative work and the relationship work. That is where they see a skew. I completely agree with you that this is not beyond reach at all, but they do have that concern. This is partly to do with the volume of workload. As the volume of workload becomes extremely difficult to manage, then inevitably pressure points to risk protection rather than rehabilitation. It is also important to remember that the work that probation officers want to be able to do, alongside all of that, in terms of rehabilitation is constrained to some extent—to increasing extent—by lack of resources in the community. We have a situation in which housing, employment and mental health services are all much less readily accessible to probation officers. In that sense, they feel very much that that is what they want to get back. They are very much interested in focusing on working more locally, and working to build up the resources for individuals in communities. You can see that there is a tension at the moment, because it is difficult to have everything. But I do not disagree with you; I think it is achievable.

Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Would you have concerns then, in the light of what you have said, about much closer joint work with the police in the administration and management of electronic monitoring?

Helen Schofield: I would not have concerns about it in areas of high risk and protection. I would have concerns in areas of lower risk in regard to offences which are potentially imprisonable, where electronic monitoring might well be used. It would depend what the role of policing was. I have a lot of experience of working alongside the police, and the first thing they would always emphasise is the protection of the public and high risk. They are less interested in that balanced overall role of rehabilitation and the management of risk.

Q14 The Chair: It is fascinating. I am listening to this, and I had made notes, in fact, before Baroness Hughes came in with a supplementary, about what would undermine the Probation Service and the whole issue of the links between the police, the Probation Service and the private sector organisation. But I will at least try and simplify some of that and ask a very simple question: do you think it is appropriate for a private sector organisation to be involved in this area of work? Perhaps, Richard, you should start off.

Richard Garside: I am sure there is a role, if only in supplying the actual tech itself, unless we are going to create a public sector company to produce all these tags—actually, Chris Grayling had some kind of vision of that some years ago, and look where that ended up. We would not do that with mobile phones or cars, I am not sure why we would do it with tags either, so at the very minimum, it seems likely that there will be some private sector involvement. Whether it should be running the system is a whole other matter, and there are some very good arguments why it makes sense for probation to be actually running it and to have an integrated delivery. You can draw examples from European and other jurisdictions. Now, if that means—

The Chair: I am going to stop you, just so we are absolutely clear about what you are saying. In your view, it would be the Probation Service that would run it, not, for instance, a joint police/Probation Service organisation, and it would not be the 500 police officers that Lord Hogan-Howe was suggesting.

Richard Garside: Yes, because you would not ask probation officers to run prisons, so why would you ask police officers to run what is effectively a probation service? The current contracts were awarded in late 2023, I think, so I guess, short of the Government bringing them to a close early, they are going to run for several years, but I very much hope that there will be a review of the potential for a probation public sector role for this technology going forward after that.

Helen Schofield: Yes, I absolutely agree. Historically, the inappropriateness seemed to be around the private sector, if you like, making money out of the justice system in this area. We have probably moved quite a long way down that road now, so I do not think it is wholly inappropriate for the private sector to be making a profit from the justice world. There has been a lot of concern about the conduct of electronic monitoring within the private sector over the years, and I do not think it is necessarily right to say that there would not be any concerns if these responsibilities were located within the public sector, but one can see that, over the years, the role of the private sector has been quite questionable and disappointing in relation to electronic monitoring, with some very poor conduct. It is more difficult to hold that to account.

I absolutely agree with Richard; the responsibility should be located first and foremost with the Probation Service. I do not think it is a probation/police partnership responsibility. I think it is for the Probation Service to establish the contracts and the partnerships that it needs in order to undertake this work effectively.

The Chair: On that particular point, both of you, one thing that we learned in the earlier session was that the use of electronic monitoring is also helpful in the detection of crime. It is an issue we have not picked up so far in this session. Clearly, therefore, the data that would come from electronic monitoring, or certainly from some forms of electronic monitoring, surely need to be fed into the police to enable them to do detection work in conjunction with live facial recognition and all other technology. Is that not a problem?

Helen Schofield: I need to think about that a little bit more closely. I accept that it is an important issue. I do not think that there is an immediate response to suggest that the data should not be accessible. I think it would be about controls.

Richard Garside: I too would not disagree with that. I suspect we are several years away from a situation where the police can, in a very integrated way, use real-life data to do real-life interventions in real-life situations to effectively prevent a crime, or at least stop it escalating, so we have time to think about this properly. But if there is useful information and data that the police can use, which is properly governed, properly managed, has the appropriate safeguards around it and we will not end up with lots of potential turf wars between probation and police about who should be intervening at what point, then yes, let us look at it.

It remains an emergent technology and it requires some really big, creative thinking: not a sort of techno-utopian vision where you replace all people with machines, but certainly some big thinking. We should not be afraid of asking some big questions of our public services and how they can most effectively embrace these new technologies, which have the potential for being transformative but are never actually going to quite deliver, I suspect, what the full-on techno-utopians think they will.

The Chair: That does require the development of a decent strategy, which Baroness Prashar will now pick up.

Q15 Baroness Prashar: As you are obviously aware, the electronic monitoring strategy was introduced in 2022. It had all the right words in it, and then it was amended, with the recommendations made by the Public Accounts Committee, and renewed in 2023. Is it working?

Richard Garside: Well, the fact that it was reviewed within a year of its initial publication is perhaps telling. The 2023 report certainly filled out some of the detail which was lacking in the 2022 report—for example, there was a much clearer emphasis on data collection and the evidence base—but in many other ways it was business as usual. I think the challenge going forward is that we are about to embark on what could be a relatively transformative period of change in the justice system, and the announcement in the next few days around the sentencing changes will be part of that. If the Government do not use that opportunity to take a fairly top-to-toe look at where EM fits into that bigger vision, then it is unlikely to deliver what the Government want. It may well not deliver it anyway, or certainly not on the timescale that the Government are looking at. So yes, absolutely.

I am starting to sound a bit like a broken record at this point, I suspect, but I cannot emphasise enough that, as part of that, the 2022 and 2023 strategies were effectively looking at “How can we make a system that is not working work a bit better? How can we improve evaluation? How can we improve data? How can we improve integration across the service?” It was not really asking the question: is the current way that we are running this fit for purpose? Maybe with the changes that are happening around sentencing, this will be an opportunity for the Government to say, “Do we really want to just hand over a whole chunk of really critical criminal justice enforcement effectively over to some black box private companies who will run it in a way whereby probation cannot get hold of the data, the police cannot get hold of the data, and the courts cannot get hold of the data?” I know what my answer to that question is, so maybe this is an opportunity for some bigger thinking. Yeah, the strategies are good as far as they go, but they certainly need improvement.

Baroness Prashar: Are you suggesting that this strategy needs a fundamental relook, in other words?

Richard Garside: Yes, it does at this point, precisely because the Government are saying they really want to go big on EM. They have inherited a strategy from a previous Government that was effectively trying to address a different set of questions. A fairly fresh rethink would be good.

Helen Schofield: I suppose one thing to say in defence of the strategy is that it did not anticipate the numbers who would be released in recent years, and obviously contractors have been struggling to source sufficient equipment and so forth, so the strategy is undermined by that. But one has to say that the electronic monitoring strategy does not seem to have had much impact on the increasing prison population in this country, and that is a serious concern. So, yes, it is essential that there is a major, fundamental review of this.

The other reason why that is so essential, and Lord Timpson points to this frequently, is the increasing importance of artificial intelligence: wider technology in the justice system is clearly on our doorstep. None of us quite knows how big this will be. As I said earlier in my evidence, the relationship between these developments and the Probation Service needs to be very imaginatively and clearly thought through and understood, but so it does in relation to the current strategy, because we are envisaging something much bigger, I think—much riskier but potentially very beneficial.

The Chair: I am afraid we are going to have to leave it there. We will follow up lots of questions with you, if we may, but I am enormously grateful to both of you for your insights. It has been enormously helpful. Certainly, I hope that we can make a small contribution to the development of the strategy that we are talking about. I accept entirely that it is going to take a number of years and has to fit in very closely with all the other developments, whether it is the sentencing review or whatever. I think that the point that Helen touched on, about the developing role of artificial intelligence and where that will fit in with the analysis of the data that will come from tagging and the use that can be made of it, is a whole area that we are also going to have to explore: even though developments are somewhat embryonic at the moment, they are developing at a huge pace. It is clearly going to be a rapidly changing field that we are looking at, and we will have to find the key issues and principles that we need to focus on. You have been very helpful in helping us to identify some of those, so on behalf of the entire committee, thank you both very much indeed.