Nearly 2,000 lags on licence were fitted with booze-aware ankle tags to stop them drinking this Christmas
LAGS on licence were fitted with booze-aware ankle tags to stop them drinking this Christmas.
Others serving community sentences also had to wear the sensitive alcohol-detecting gizmos in a crackdown on festive crime.
Anyone caught drinking in breach of a court order faced being sent back to prison in the blitz on re-offending.
In all, 1,800 had to wear one of the devices, which are able to detect booze from sweat levels on the skin.
That figure is up from around 800 criminals who were fitted with the tags last Christmas.
The gadgets are so accurate they can tell if someone has been drinking mulled wine or even if they have eaten brandy sauce on a Christmas pudding.
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Prisons and Probation minister Damian Hinds said: “Alcohol-fuelled crime such as domestic abuse is known to spike over the festive period.
“Our new alcohol tags can help stop that by protecting victims and tackling the causes of offending.” He said the Government is investing £183million in electronic monitoring.
Mr Hinds added: “The increased use of sobriety tags is already helping to keep our communities safer.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said the detectors were 97 per cent effective at keeping the offenders wearing them off the booze.
