Report warns: Thousands of prisoners roam British streets unsupervised

A report has revealed that more than 5,000 lawbreakers remained unsupervised during the first half of the year due to the failure to install electronic tracking devices in Britain, while 1,600 devices lost signal contact for more than two weeks as a result of technical faults, according to "The Guardian".

The "Institute for Government" revealed the full scale of the crisis facing the post-release supervision system in England and Wales, concluding that "rationing of supervision" - caused by staff shortages - had made court sentences "mere ink on paper" for the majority of offenders.

The report noted that once the "Sentencing Act 2026", which accelerates release dates in many sentences, is fully implemented, most offenders will spend the final third of their sentence on conditional release without any actual oversight.

Significant risks
The report, issued by the independent research center, found that this situation "carries the risk of further undermining public confidence in the criminal justice system, making sentences more complex and opaque, including for victims".

Kasia Roland, Deputy Director at the Institute and author of the report, said: "It is difficult to describe the extent of frustration and unhappiness felt by many supervision staff; they feel the situation is characterized by utter chaos, that all these changes are being forced upon them, and they are concerned about their personal safety and the risks to public safety posed by those under their supervision".

She added: "Court sentences no longer truly reflect the time actually served by convicts. The current situation means that if a person is sentenced to six years in prison, they are likely to spend two years in prison, two years under supervision, and then another two years under conditions that no one monitors or enforces. This is not a six-year prison sentence in any sense".

Weak supervision
The report's harshest criticism directed at the "Probation Service" concerned the electronic tracking of offenders, finding that this system "suffers from poor performance and fails to meet required needs".

Between January and April, more than 5,000 people - who should have been supervised - were not provided with electronic tracking devices, representing 15% of the total number of individuals subject to electronic monitoring orders.

Additionally, nearly 1,600 people wore trackers that sent no signal to the monitoring system for two weeks, due to technical faults or uncharged devices.

The report highlighted that such problems led to none of the post-release supervision units inspected in 2024 or 2025 receiving a rating better than "requires improvement", with two-thirds of these units rated as "inadequate".

The report, based on public data and interviews with field staff, concluded that alongside increasing risks to public safety, prisoners themselves have also been let down, with little action taken to reduce reoffending rates.

Roland said: "People have told me stories about prisoners being referred to drug treatment programs, but their sentence ends before their turn comes up on the waiting list. The system is not working to help people".

The report urged the government to increase the number of post-release supervision workers at a steady pace, and to reinstate home detention curfews to help manage prison populations.

It also called for adopting a sentencing model characterized by "transparency and clarity", explicitly defining periods of imprisonment and community supervision, so that there are no periods of unsupervised conditional release.

The report praised Keir Starmer's government for taking steps to stabilize prison numbers, but noted that these efforts may have been "undermined" by Andy Burnham, who announced a number of exemptions to the early release program following an angry public backlash.

In early October, the first batch of 700 people out of a total of 4,500 criminals expected to be released was freed early, as part of emergency measures applied as prisons approached maximum capacity.

Some said they expect a quick return to prison due to lack of shelter, and because it would breach the terms of conditional release. The Institute for Government Studies report stated that recall procedures for reasons unrelated to new crimes had "risen significantly" in recent years.