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Alcohol-detecting Tags

Published:

Close to 2000 offenders across England and Wales were required to wear alcohol tags over the recent festive period, reducing the impact of alcohol fuelled offending.

Alcohol tags are sophisticated enough to differentiate between foods that contain traces of alcohol, such as brandy sauce on Christmas Pudding and festive drinks, such as mulled wine, which determined offenders might seek to exploit and get drunk on.

Offenders who breach their tag risk a return to court and even imprisonment.

Alcohol tags were first introduced under a pilot scheme in Wales in October 2020. They were subsequently rolled out across England in April 2021. Courts have since been able to make “alcohol abstinence orders” as part of community sentences to those convicted of alcohol-related crimes, including motoring offences.

Alcohol tags are doing what they were designed to do, with 12,000 tagging orders now expected to be made over the next 3 years, as part of the government’s £183 million investment initiative to tackle alcohol-fuelled crime, in particular domestic abuse.

For further information:

Christmas and New Year’s booze ban for 1,800 alcohol-tagged offenders – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)Nearly 2,000 offenders made to wear alcohol-detecting tags this Christmas | Politics News | Sky News