Justice Secretary Cannot Say How Many Freed Prisoners Are Tagged
Alex Norris was unable to say how many of the roughly 700 prisoners released early on Thursday had been fitted with electronic tags. “I don’t have that figure today, it only happened on Thursday,” he told the BBC. Nearly 5,000 are due to be freed in stages over the next year. He also insisted the courts backlog, nearly 81,000 cases, would fall despite the abandonment of plans to curb jury trials.
Norris said legislating for judge-only trials “was always going to be the most complicated to implement”; the Ministry of Justice now proposes them only for complex fraud and financial offences. Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, called the retreat “a major victory for everyone who fought to defend trial by jury”. Tagging is the weak point: HM Inspectorate of Probation reported last month that almost half of tags are not fitted on time, with some offenders waiting up to five months.