THE system of electronically tagging offenders instead of sending them to jail has always been flawed. Today we report on a classic case that exposes all the inadequacies of the system.

Raymond Speers was tagged and given a suspended six-month prison sentence for a violent assault.

Yet he took the tag off and headed to Spain on holiday.

He's now in prison as a result but that really isn't the point.

We have all read and heard stories about offenders who have either committed another crime while tagged or simply removed the device so they can go about their nefarious business undetected.

The question we would ask is this: if these tags are consistently shown to be ineffective then why continue with the system?

We accept there is a dearth of prison places.

We accept that not all offenders deserve jail sentences.

But there must be a better way of dealing with violent criminals like Raymond Speers.

If people like him can simply put two fingers up to the law when dealt with by the courts, then they need to be given harsher sentences.

The tagging experiment has long since failed. Yet there is no sign of alternative proposals from the Government (or any other political party for that matter).

We do not have the answer to this problem.

Throwing more people into prison is too simplistic a solution.

But there must be something better than this tagging farce.