Pioneering electronic tags first introduced by police in Herts could be rolled out across all forces nationwide.
Older tags can only tell police whether criminals were in a certain place or not, and were mainly used to make sure curfews were observed. All information was passed on to police through a third party provider.
But the new GPS-enabled tags, introduced in Herts nearly two years ago, monitor exactly where offenders are and at what time.
Det Insp Stuart Campfield said: “If we know where they are all the time and they know that we know, it makes them less likely to commit offences.
“Most of our offenders are wearing tags voluntarily, believe it or not.
“Most of them do not want to be committing crime and are suspected by police for doing it regularly.
“They want to show us and the probation service that they are not committing it, which informs our decision-making process about them.”
Read the full story in this week’s Gazette, out now.