One murder, four manslaughters, 56 woundings and more than seven hundred assaults have been carried out by criminals since the early release Home Detention Curfew scheme came into force in 1999.

Danny Cann, 27, a convicted robber, murdered Stephen Cox by battering him to death with a baseball bat and a hammer in revenge for a headbutting only weeks after walking out of jail on HDC. He was jailed for life at the Old Bailey last December.

Cann murdered Mr Cox, 42, at his bedsit in Friern Barnet, North London in January 2005 after being released from jail in December 2004. He had been jailed for three years in September 2003 for robbery.

Under the Home Detention Curfew scheme, introduced by Jack Straw to deal with an earlier prison overcrowding crisis, offenders serving between three months and four years are eligible to be released on an electronic tag up to 135 days before the end of their sentence.

Cann from Clapham, South London should have been wearing the tag at the time of the murder but was not. It has never been found.

The murder and other serious violent offences committed by offenders released on HDC are disclosed in a note sent by the Home Office for today’s Commons public accounts committee report on the Government’s tagging schemes for offenders.

In addition to the murder, assaults, and woundings there were also 100 cases of possessing an offensive weapon, one incident of causing death by reckless driving, 100 of obstructing police and 16 other violent attacks.

The violent offences were committed between January 1999 and the end of December 2005. Overall 7,896 offences had been committed by prisoners on HDC during that period. A total of 131,000 have been given HDC between January 1999 and the end of June 2006.

Today’s report said there is "insufficient evidence" that tagging helped to reduce re-offending or rehabilitate criminals.

The committee also expressed concern that prison governors who are responsible for deciding whether to release offenders on HDC receive no information on whether the prisoner has completed the curfew or not.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the committee, said that releasing selected offenders early from prison on condition that they are subject to an electronically monitored curfew at home was a cost-effective alternative to jail.

He gave warning: "But only if there is minimal risk to the public. In fact, the prison governors who take the final decision to release offenders on curfew are not told if their assessments turned out to be sound.

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