Number of pupils electronically tagged reaches record levels

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In March this year, 3,658 youngsters were tagged - a rise of 57 per cent from the same period two years ago.

Tagging was introduced in 2000 to create a "prison without walls" for low-risk offenders.

However, the scheme was expanded so that tagging became a punishment in itself.

The most startling increase in tagging has taken place in London where the numbers have more than doubled in two years, according to Government figures.

The statistics will fuel criticisms that tagging is a "soft option".

In some schools, teachers have complained pupils regard having a tag as a "badge of honour".

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: "There is a small but increasing number of young people who are out of control and for whom no remedy appears to be working.

"It's depressing that some of these youngsters feel able to misbehave so badly as there seems to be no effective way of curtailing that behaviour."