Mark Woods, 28, from Cromer, in Norfolk, was found dead in his flat last weekend. He had been on the programme for just over a month.
Probation officers said last night that the scheme, which uses an electronic device to deter the wearer from leaving home, was often inappropriate.Mr Woods, who lived alone and was put on what is officially known as the “electronic monitoring” scheme for six months, was described by welfare staff as “emotionally unstable”.Tagging was introduced by Michael Howard, then home secretary, in July 1995 and adopted by his successor, Jack Straw.This month the scheme will be doubled in size. A local project, Exit, offered her the chance to support other sex workers and help them off the streets.That was two years ago. Emma has since had a baby daughter who she and her parents worship She is independent and slowly recovering her self- esteem. She knows her work with women on the streets makes a difference. “Every day there is another child starting out on the same route I did,” she says.

“That keeps me going.”"Emma” asked for her name and some details to be changed, to protect her from her former pimps.Beaten and sold, page 18. Another time she went to college and trained to be a nursery nurse. She loved working with children and she had found something she was good at But on her first placement, she was vetted by the police. Her criminal record said she was a sex offender, which is how the law defines prostitutes. She ran from the nursery back to the street.Then a 17-year-old family friend, who worked the Lane, was murdered.

“Every time I even thought of working all I could see was her face as he strangled her I almost felt like I was becoming her,” Emma says “If I’d worked again I might have killed a punter. I hadn’t even known she was working.” The tragedy reunited Emma with her family, who realised how easily it could have been their daughter. “I didn’t feel I deserved their love.” She was sent to a residential home where she says “most of the girls were on the game anyway”. Within weeks she was back with her pimp.She nearly got out so many times. One time she was hospitalised after a pimp had beaten her up and left her for dead, but she found herself unable to speak about what had happened.

The same police had picked her up twice before and cautioned her. Under British law this meant she could now be charged as a “common prostitute”.Court was the first time Emma had seen her parents since the night she left home. Her dad, a traditional man who had served in the Royal Navy, cried as he heard his daughter plead guilty to soliciting Her family wanted her to come home, but Emma refused. “He tortured and degraded me until it was like life before had never existed.”In 1989, she was arrested near her home in Leeds. “I never spoke unless he told me to, I ate and slept when he said I cooked and cleaned for him I was terrified of him.” She laughs, painfully. “Sex with punters became like having a cup of tea.” Sex with her pimp was worse “He was a sick bastard,” she says, shuddering. One man who used to pay Emma to babysit him while he “freebased” cocaine once offered her 24 hours of doing whatever she liked.