AC-2025-LON-000643 - [2025] EWHC 2024 (Admin)

The Claimant filed a statement dated 26 February 2025 stating that he categorically denied that he had imbibed any alcohol since being released from prison, and that he was absolutely committed to never drinking alcohol or taking drugs ever again. He was a barber by trade and had started working in a barber’s shop from November 2024.

The Claimant filed a statement dated 1 April 2025 from the manager of the barber shop at which the Claimant had worked, Mr. Zoeb Hasan, stating that the Claimant was never intoxicated at any time while he was working at the shop. He also stated that they constantly used numerous products which contain ethanol, methanol, or similar alcoholic chemicals, as did most barber shops.

The Defendant filed a statement dated 22 April 2025 from Ms. Sarah Kintu, the Claimant’s Community Offender Manager, who had made the decision to recommend recall. She described the events surrounding that decision and appended relevant documents.

The Defendant has also filed a statement dated 23 April 2025 from Shaun Stewart, Senior Data Analyst and Judicial Services Lead at SCRAM Systems, who had submitted the “SCRAM Systems Non-Compliance Report” dated 14 January 2025. Insofar as it purports to be expert opinion evidence, no permission has been sought, nor granted, and I will not treat this statement as if it were expert evidence.

Mr. Stewart states that the SCRAM device is fitted to the wearer’s ankle and takes readings from the wearer’s insensible perspiration from the skin every 30 minutes, testing it for alcohol on the wearer’s skin (as opposed to in their blood). It performs a self-diagnostic test every 8 hours and if it fails any portion of this test it will flag itself for removal out of the field and SCRAM Systems will not confirm any alert generated after that flag is raised. The tag detects alcohol in the environment, such as in a barber shop, and a review of the tag data conducted by Mr. Stewart revealed that there had been 32 non-confirmed alcohol events (which failed criterion 6 – the Environmental Contaminant test) associated with the Claimant’s tag between 24 April 2024 and 2 January 2025. The SCRAM tag has been used in various courts including in the US and UK, and has been the subject of over 30 peer-reviewed studies since 2006, and 26 other independent evaluations. In 2013 SCRAM Systems conducted a statistical analysis and meta-analysis of the SCRAM data and found that the false positive rate was 0.14%.

Mr. Stewart also stated that the SCRAM tag worn by the Claimant passed all its self-diagnostic tests and was functioning as designed during the confirmed consumption events.

The Defendant also seeks to rely on the statement dated 24 April 2025 of Nina Shuttlewood, Head of Post-Release and National Security Casework within the Public Protection Casework Section (“PPCS”), part of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (“HMPPS”). HMPPS is an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice. Ms. Shuttlewood explains that the Probation Service (another part of HMPPS) initiates the process for recall by making a recommendation, and it is then for PPCS to take the recall decision on behalf of the Defendant.

The Defendant also relies on the statement dated 25 April 2025 of Stephen O’Connor, Deputy Director of Probation Policy, who sets out the history of Alcohol Monitoring on Licence (“AML”), following the Defendant’s decision to utilise AML nationally in June 2022.