New GPS Zones Will Keep Serious Offenders Away From Their Victims — Here's What It Means

Justice Secretary Alex Norris has announced that a new scheme will confine serious sexual and violent offenders on probation to small areas, sometimes only a few miles wide, starting in October. Probation officers will be able to limit where offenders can go for as long as they think necessary. If an offender breaks the rules, they could be sent back to prison. (BBC News)

At the moment, offenders can be given an exclusion zone, which bans them from specific places — like a victim's home or workplace. The new restriction zones work the other way around: instead of listing places to avoid, they draw a small boundary around the offender and say, you cannot leave this area. Probation officers will set the boundaries for each offender and talk to victims when doing so. GPS tags, checked by probation staff, will show if anyone steps outside their zone. (BBC News)

The legal power comes from the Sentencing Act 2026, which became law in January 2026. A separate order brought the relevant parts into force on 5 October 2026. (legislation.gov.uk). The government said the new zones would allow victims to travel without fear of running into their offender. (gov.uk)

The Crime and Policing Bill adds a new duty on people serving sentences in the community — that is, serving their sentence outside prison under the supervision of probation staff or youth offending teams, which oversee young offenders. (gov.uk). This sits alongside a bigger expansion of electronic tagging announced in September 2025, which will see tens of thousands more offenders fitted with GPS tags. Probation officers can decide whether to tag an offender based on the risk they pose to the public and to their victim. (gov.uk)

The new zones follow a change to early release rules. On 4 August, the government said people convicted of rape, serious child sex offences and grooming would no longer be allowed out of prison early, a decision ordered by the Prime Minister. (gov.uk). The Prison Governors' Association warned that this last-minute change put extra pressure on prison staff. (BBC News)

A government guide published on 10 August — called the progression model — sets out that some serious sexual and violent offenders may face extra restrictions when leaving prison, including areas they are not allowed to leave. (gov.uk). The government has also said that victims will have a say in new restrictions on offenders leaving prison, and that nearly all offenders will be tagged and given curfews and exclusion zones. (gov.uk)

Amy Glover, who runs domestic abuse services at the charity Advance, welcomed the change in focus but pointed out that only 5% of abuse survivors who pursue a criminal conviction actually get one. (BBC News). That means the new zones only help with cases that have already made it all the way through the courts to a sentence. They do not reach the majority of abuse cases that drop out of the system before anyone is convicted.

The restriction zones fit inside an existing system called MAPPA — short for Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements — in which police, prisons and probation work together to manage the risks posed by sexual and violent offenders living in the community. (gov.uk). A report published in April 2026 by HMICFRS, the body that inspects policing, looked at how police handle online child sexual abuse cases and manage registered sex offenders. It added to questions about how well the current system tracks dangerous people in the community. (HMICFRS)

The broader picture is that the government is doing two things at once: putting electronic tags on more offenders, while making it harder for the most serious offenders to leave prison early. The restriction zone scheme sits between these two changes. It only applies to offenders already living in the community under probation supervision, and it adds a way to keep them in a set area that the old exclusion zones could not do.

The practical question is whether probation staff and GPS technology can cope with the extra work. The Prison Governors' Association has already warned about pressure on prison staff from the early release changes. Whether restriction zones actually work depends on the same workforce that is already under strain.

For victims, the biggest change is that they will help shape the boundaries of the zones themselves, rather than just naming places to avoid. The government says this gives victims freedom to go about their lives. But Glover's point about the 5% conviction rate is a reminder that these tools only reach offenders who have already been through the courts. The vast majority of abuse cases never get that far, and the new scheme does not change that.