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The Mirror’s Sophie Huskisson was fitted with an alcohol tag for a day to see if she could beat it – but as prisons minister James Timpson said, they certainly do work
Mirror reporter tests out ‘alcohol tag’ that help offenders stay sober
It is not every day you get an alcohol tag attached to your ankle and tell the prisons minister you’re going to try to set it off by drinking at the pub.
But James Timpson is so confident in the ability and success of sobriety tags that he let The Mirror take one for a spin. Nearly 4,000 offenders across the country are currently wearing alcohol tags – clever electronic monitoring anklets that measure the wearer’s sweat to check they’re not drinking.
Kneeling beside my newly fitted tag, Lord Timpson told me they could be the key to “breaking the link between alcohol and crime”. He said booze-drinking is linked to two in five violent crimes in the UK and causes “untold misery” to people across the country.
“We need to stamp it out to make our streets safer,” Lord Timpson said. “Having this smart tech clamped around their ankle is the wake-up call many offenders need. It leaves them with the sobering thought that one slip-up could send them straight back to jail.”
So this week I spent a day being treated like a criminal so I could test out exactly how the alcohol tag is triggered after a drink… or several. It started with a trip to the Ministry of Justice where I was fitted with a SCRAM CAM (Continuous Alcohol Monitoring) bracelet – made famous when donned by actress Lindsay Lohan in 2010.
I had the tag fitted to my ankle with two screws to secure it in, plus a “tamper clip” fitted using a special tool. Getting myself in the mind of an offender, who might not so willingly want to wear a tag, my first question to the SCRAM director was: “What happens if I try to smash it off with a hammer?”
In short, it would come off – being able to remove a tag is part of the design in case of emergencies, such as for a scan or X-ray after a car accident. But if an offender tries to cut or smash it off illicitly a whole array of clever features – including sensors on the strap and casing – send an alert to the probation service.
Some offenders have also tried tampering with it by putting things that resemble skin between the tag and their leg – including ham, chicken skin and baloney. But the use of infrared beams which reflect light between the wearer’s skin and the tag, as well as a temperature gauge, mean inserting anything at all will be picked up.
After my tag was securely fitted, I picked up a sausage, bean and cheese pasty from Greggs to line my stomach and headed to the pub to check just how intelligent these tags really are.
When a person drinks alcohol, 95% of it is metabolised by the liver, 4% through the lungs and kidneys, and crucially 1% through the skin. Alcohol tags have a metal plate with a small fan inside that draws in some of the perspiration on the wearer’s skin to detect whether they’ve had any booze. The buzz of the fan – which felt like having a mobile phone receiving a text on my leg – goes off every half an hour, taking a sample which is sent to highly trained data analysts.
To my surprise, I metabolise alcohol quickly and within only around 30 minutes of my first tequila shot, I’d started releasing booze through my skin. A SCRAM official whacked out his laptop and said an alcohol event was being picked up – I’d been rumbled.
Three shots, two beers, a glass of wine and a gin and tonic later and it’s fair to say I had definitely broken any possible sobriety restrictions I was under. When I was summoned to the Ministry of Justice the following day, I found out my alcohol levels had peaked at four times the drink driving limit.
The tags give much more detailed information than a breathalyser, which checks if a person is drunk there and then. Instead they show the journey of a “drinking event”. And indeed, I was shown an apt graph on a screen with a bell curve showing I certainly went on a “journey” at the pub the previous day. If I was an offender, I’d likely be back in court to face further punishment or sent straight back to prison.
One thing that particularly struck me about wearing a tag was how conscious I was of my actions. It wasn’t physically uncomfortable on my leg but I certainly felt mentally uncomfortable that my every move could be tracked. Tags act as a reminder for many criminals, who want to quit drinking but need an extra level of accountability, to stop and think about the consequences of their actions.
And alcohol tags are hugely successful – people stay sober for 97% of the days they have one on. In many cases it can result in the person never drinking again. Since 2020/21, offenders in England and Wales can be told to wear a sobriety tag for a set time period when they are freed from prison or under a community order for an alcohol-related offence.
The Ministry of Justice is currently undertaking a major review of sentencing to find new ways to punish offenders and deal with overflowing prisons. Under plans being considered, criminals could be ordered to serve their sentences at home in virtual prisons using increased tagging to keep offenders under house arrest.
Other tech is also being explored such as special wrist watches that “nudge” offenders about appointments with probation officers or mental health services. When 80% of crimes are committed by someone who has offended before, tech could be the answer to not only easing the prison crisis but changing people’s behaviour.
Lord Timpson’s words about alcohol tags show he is a prisons minister looking for answers. Not only are they “innovative” and “smart”, he said, “best of all, these tags work”.
