Prisons to expand electronic tagging

The Irish Prison Service is significantly expanding its electronic tagging capacity, as a penal policy review group completes a long-awaited report for the justice minister.

Prison bosses have issued a tender for the provision of 50 electronic monitoring devices — up from the current number of 10.

The tags are, so far, mainly used in order to save on supervision costs for inmates who need to go to hospital for treatment or surgery.