CRIMINALS who are tagged appear to be getting away with dodging their curfews without any fear of being brought before the courts, a worrying new report reveals today.

Inmates released early from prison will only face automatic re-arrest if they break the whole of their curfew - typically 12 hours - in one go, inspectors found.

Only when they break their order a second time will they be re-arrested.

The report also revealed a more than third of those given tags broke the terms of their orders.

The question we have to ask today is what is the point?

We thought tags were there so that offenders could be properly monitored and any time that curfews were broken the culprit would have to explain themselves in court.

Now it seems they can go for hours without any form of reprimand, leaving the whole system flawed.

We’ve yet to hear why this is the case but at the end of the day there can be no excuses.

This is not what the public expect from this system.

There now needs to be an urgent review of why this has been allowed to happen.

With our prisons so full it looks like the government faces a major problem if the tagging system is so shoddy that offenders will have to spend more time in jails rather than being out on release and on tag.

But if it’s not working as it should then that is the only option because we could have all sorts of people out on our streets at times when they should be in a secure area where the authorities can keep track of them.