Survivor Says Violent Ex Left Prison Without Promised Tag
A domestic violence survivor has spent weeks fearing an attack because her former partner left prison without the electronic tag she had been told he would wear. Her case sits on top of a wider problem with how offenders are tagged after release.
Weeks without a tag
Michelle, 38, lives in a static caravan with her four children. Relatives sleep on her floor in case the man comes back. She says she has been "living in terror".
He was released on 15 October. Her police liaison officer had told her a GPS tag would follow to track his movements. It was not fitted. On Monday a government source said he now wears two monitors, a GPS tag and an alcohol tag. The source said the Guardian's queries were not the reason the tag was fitted.
Assaults and breached orders
Michelle says he first punched her in the face in early 2024. He was arrested and bailed. The next day he returned to her five-bedroom rented home, kicked the door in and waved a knife at her, she says. Her 16-year-old son had to pull him off.
He received 38 months in November 2024 after convictions for two counts of assault by beating and one of affray. Released in February 2025, he was barred from her home and from her town.
He breached those terms in July 2025 and in April and August this year. Photos posted by him and his friends showed him at parties and pubs in towns he was barred from. Michelle reported two breaches, and each led to a 56-day recall to prison. Following council advice, she has since left the rented house.
What the inspectors found
Tags are fitted after release by the private firm Serco, not before offenders walk out. A report from the chief inspectors for probation and prisons, released on Thursday, found that nearly half of offenders are not tagged promptly. In one in ten cases the device goes on up to five months later.
The report also said Serco counted as meeting its targets when it only tried to fit a device, whether or not the tag ended up on and working. One of the main reasons tags were not fitted was that the offender was not at the agreed address when contractors arrived. This group makes up a third of the 5,000 offenders in the community who have no tag.
Calls for change
Liberal Democrat MP Vikki Slade raised Michelle's case in parliament. She called releasing people without a tag "utterly crazy".
The prison officers' union, POA, has written to the justice secretary, Alex Norris. Its national chair, Mark Fairhurst, wants prison officers trained to fit and activate tags before release and argues for a formal assessment of insourcing.
The Ministry of Justice said it was carrying out the biggest ever expansion of electronic monitoring, including tagging more offenders before they leave prison. Serco said it attempts to fit a device to everyone required to wear one and reports those it cannot fit to the relevant authorities.
Our view
Nothing in the account explains why the tag was not fitted when he left prison, so the cause of the delay stays unclear. The inspectors' figures suggest her wait is not unusual. The decision that matters is whether ministers move fitting inside prisons, as the union wants, or keep it with the contractor.
Source: the Guardian