Satellite tagging technology will be used to monitor the capital’s most prolific offenders in the first scheme of its kind in the UK, launched today by the Mayor of London.

Magistrates in eight London boroughs can now order the wearing of GPS tags as part of a community or suspended sentence, enabling the offender’s whereabouts to be known.

Adult reoffending costs London £2.25 billion a year, accounting for 69 per cent of the total criminal justice system spend.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I’ve put the needs of victims and the most vulnerable Londoners at the heart of my new Policing and Crime Plan, and a crucial part of this is tackling the enormous problem of reoffending in the capital.“

Overall reoffending rates for London stand at 24% but London’s 4,000 most prolific offenders have predicted reoffending rates of around 82%.

The £150,000 GPS pilot is part of the Mayor’s wider work to test new ways to tackle persistent offenders, reduce the cost to the justice system and cut crime, as set out in his new Police and Crime Plan published on Monday.

The tags gather data to monitor an offender’s compliance with their court order or bail conditions, alerting probation officers if these are breached.

This could include entering an exclusion zone or failing to attend mandated appointments.

For the first time the London trial will enable the police to use this information for crime mapping, providing information on an offender’s location at a specific date and time to identify whether they could have been at the scene of a crime.

The pilot, in the North and East London Local Justice Areas, aims to make between 75 and 100 prolific offenders subject to GPS tagging, with young adults and female offenders a priority.

They will be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week and face a potential prison sentence if they breach the terms of their court order.

Today, the Mayor also announced an additional £620,000 to extend his wider criminal justice programme for a further 18 months.

The Mayor’s wider criminal justice programme, of which the GPS tags pilot is a part, is taking place in Camden, Enfield, Haringey, Islington, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.