That is what I meant by the concept of having minimum and maximum sentences. There would still be a determinate sentence with a maximum term—it would not be an indeterminate sentence, which is reserved for much more serious crimes—but release after the minimum point would nevertheless depend on fulfilling certain conditions, including those referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman).
I particularly welcome the measures relating to the electronic monitoring of offenders and provisions for the greater use of tagging for the supervision of offenders released from custody. There is no doubt that the advance of technology and the use of satellite tracking mean that a huge and so far largely untapped potential exists to ensure greater confidence in the criminal justice system and enable the safe and secure monitoring of offenders. Whether that is for offenders who receive some kind of curfew as part of their sentence, or whether the purpose is to ensure their safe and effective supervision on release, much more could be done, and has already been done in other countries.
There are two particular lessons. The first is that we should question how quickly the criminal justice system can embrace new technology. The criminal justice system is very centralised, which does not always make it easy to have local innovation in its operation, whether in relation to how certain courts operate—I will come on to that—or to this use of technology. As the Secretary of State knows, some very impressive pilot schemes have been conducted by Hertfordshire police in relation to satellite tagging.
There is, however, a feeling that we have been slow, perhaps unnecessarily slow, to ensure that such technology is made available to other police forces or is used more widely. That is partly because of the understandable caution that results from a determination to ensure that technology is used properly and that public safety remains paramount, but it is also partly because of the centralised nature of the system and the bias against innovation.
If we want a greater use of such technology, we must move towards a system that is more distributed, and in which local criminal justice innovation is encouraged. Through a more decentralised system, we have such opportunities. For instance, police and crime commissioners, who are keen to take on such a role, could supervise its use to ensure that there was some kind of local democratic accountability.