New GPS tagging scheme for stalking offenders launches in London
- New pilot project will see more stalking offenders fitted with GPS tags on release from prison to protect victims and prevent reoffending
- Action builds on measures announced by the Government last week to protect victims and is the latest part of the Mayor’s £5.7 million GPS tagging programme
- Launch coincides with 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and forms part of the Mayor’s record £233 million investment to tackle violence against women and girls
More stalking offenders released from prison will be GPS tagged as part of a new pilot scheme to protect victims and help prevent reoffending, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, will announce today.
The new pilot scheme will tag individuals who have served custodial sentences for stalking offences with a tracking device under strict licence conditions.1 More than 200 offenders across varying sentence types are set to be tagged by March 2026.
The scheme will also include stalkers who receive community sentences, by working in partnership with the Ministry of Justice’s GPS programme, meaning that for the first time all types of stalking behaviour will be eligible for GPS monitoring. This will ensure that stalking behaviour, including when the victims are strangers or acquaintances, can be better managed.
It has been developed following close consultation with victims and survivor groups across the capital and builds on the Mayor’s public health approach to tackling violence against women and girls and his record £233 million investment from City Hall.
The announcement comes during this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence – an annual international campaign starting on 25th November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and running until 10th December, Human Rights Day.
The Mayor is also investing an initial £50,000 to help ensure the management of stalking cases on the new pilot and greater information sharing with partners, including the Met police, London Probation, the NHS and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.
The announcement builds on measures announced by the Government last week to safeguard victims and is the latest part of Sadiq’s £5.7 million funding of state-of-the-art GPS tracking technology2 to ensure the focus on behaviour change is on offenders, not their victims.
The latest data from the Mayor’s knife crime tagging programme shows 67 per cent of tag wearers successfully completed their period of monitoring up to a maximum period of six months. A third (33 per cent) had been recalled to prison – with GPS tracking data playing a significant role in the detection of non-compliance and new offences in recalled cases.3
The Mayor’s GPS Domestic Abuse Tagging Pilot has also tagged 707 high-risk individuals released from prison since 2019 and analysis from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) found improved risk management, improved protection for victims and more effective enforcement of licence conditions when these are broken.4 Following the success of this pilot, MOPAC has worked with the Ministry of Justice to support their new national electronic tagging programme.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Stalking is an horrendous crime that can have a long-lasting impact on victims, who we know are more likely to be young women. I'm pleased to launch my new GPS stalking pilot today which will play a key role in preventing reoffending and safeguarding victims.
“The £5.7 million GPS tagging programme has been working to ensure perpetrators of violence change their behaviour, not victims and survivors. The results we’ve seen so far show that GPS tagging is effectively dissuading individuals from reoffending, but also quickly detecting those offenders who breach their licence conditions and could pose a risk to their victims.
“I will continue to do everything within my power to ensure that ending violence against women and girls is treated with the utmost urgency – both by our police and society as a whole as we continue to build a safer London for everyone.”
Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending, James Timpson, said: “Tagging has a crucial part to play in keeping the public safe and this extra investment will help the Probation Service keep an even more watchful eye on stalkers in the capital.
“Making our streets safer is central to this government’s Plan for Change, and these tags will help us enforce restrictions on stalkers’ movements so those who try to reoffend face further punishment and victims can feel safer going about their lives.”
Met Police Commander Kevin Southworth said: “We are having real success in tackling stalking in London by taking a data-led approach and working closely with partners at the Stalking Threat Assessment Centre (STAC). There is still lots more to do but this additional tagging capability will act as a deterrent to stalkers and help us detect them when they breach their conditions so we can get them off the streets.”
Sara Murray OBE, CEO of Buddi – the provider of location monitoring technology for the GPS stalking pilot, said: “This pilot represents the latest step in Buddi’s longstanding working relationship with MOPAC to support vulnerable people and reduce reoffending of people as part of their licence on release from prison. I am very proud that we can now help even more victims to feel safe in the knowledge that their stalkers are being properly monitored and managed. Recent high-profile cases, including the plot against presenter Holly Willoughby and the events depicted in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer have brought to light the very real threat of non-domestic stalking cases, and Buddi looks forward to helping more people who are forced to live with this terrifying reality.”
London’s Independent Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman OBE said: “Stalking has a harrowing impact on the lives of victims as well as their friends and loved ones.
“Having called for GPS tagging to be extended to stalking offenders, I very much welcome the launch of the Mayor's new GPS Stalking pilot. This will allow probation services and the police to effectively monitor stalkers and provide an extra layer of security to victims.
“My London Stalking Review has highlighted the scale of work needed to tackle stalking and I will continue to work closely with police, probation services and the wider criminal justice system to ensure this remains a priority. It’s incredibly important that stalking victims get the support and protection they require and today’s announcement is a significant step in the right direction.”
Notes to editors
[1] Background to the GPS tagging pilot scheme and how it works:
The Mayor has invested £5.7 million in his GPS tagging programme since 2019.
Real-time GPS data provides the London Probation Service with accurate location and tracking data and heatmap technology is used to show an overview of a tagged person’s movements during the course of a day, week or month as well as their lifestyle habits, ensuring that the probation service can closely monitor tagged offenders across all 32 London boroughs.
The data detects non-compliance from tagged offenders – including increased risk by those who may have entered an exclusion zone set-up to protect a victim once offenders have been released from prison. Previously, this behaviour might have gone untraced but now enforcement action can be taken promptly and where necessary to protect victims and bring perpetrators to account.
The Mayor’s GPS tagging programme is committed to tackling racial disproportionality and is being closely monitored and assessed at all times.
Data collected from the pilot has also been used to assist in crime mapping – the process with which crime incident patterns are analysed by police – to automatically cross-reference the movements of tagged offenders with reported crimes in London. Initial results of crime mapping indicates that the use of GPS tagging is a deterrent to further offending.
In total, 1,800 number of people have been tagged on the ongoing knife crime programme. There are currently 164 active cases on this pilot.
[2] In March this year, the final GPS tagging knife crime programme report was released detailing the performance, process and impact evaluation of the extended GPS knife crime tagging pilot – covering over a three-and-a-half-year implementation period (February 2019 – November 2022).
The full report and analysis can be viewed here: https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/mayors-office-policing-and-crime-mopac/mopac-data-and-statistics/mopac-academic-research?ac-29300=208748.
[3] Of the 1,636 completed cases in the Mayor’s GPS knife crime pilot, 67 per cent (1,104 cases) had successfully completed their period of monitoring and 33 per cent (532 cases) had been recalled, with GPS data playing a significant role in the detection of non-compliance or new offences in 39 per cent (205) of the recalled cases.
[4] In May 2023, MOPAC also published a new evaluation report on the Mayor’s GPS Domestic Abuse Tagging Pilot. It can be viewed here: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2023-04/DA%20GPS%20tagging%20evaluation%20report%20final%20for%20publication.pdf.
The GPS domestic abuse tagging pilot ended in May 2024.
Domestic Abuse Perpetrators on Licence (DAPOL) is the MoJ’s GPS programme for Domestic Abuse, which includes individuals with domestic abuse offences related to stalking.
[5] The GPS stalking pilot will utilise technology from technology company Buddi.