offenders are breaching their curfews by carrying out violent crimes, firearm offences and killings, according to official figures.

However, the true extent of reoffending is likely to be much higher as the figures only account for those convicted of further crimes.

A report yesterday warned that offenders could go missing for 11 hours 59 minutes of a 12-hour curfew but only receive a mild warning.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation uncovered "deeply worrying" failures, such as the case of a wife beater who was sent back to live at home under curfew, which led to another assault.

This week it emerged that a teenager who stabbed an architecture student to death had been subject to a curfew, but had removed his tag.

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The 15 year - old, who cannot be named, murdered Steven Grisales, 21, in north London after the student told him off for throwing conkers. The boy was jailed for a minimum of 10 - and - a - half years at the Old Bailey.

Figures for 2008/9 show that 890 crimes were committed by ex-inmates wearing tags.

Among them were 70 burglaries, 64 assaults, 32 class-A drug crimes and 16 robberies.

Nine offenders were caught carrying a knife or offensive weapon.

The chief inspector of probation, Liz Calderbank, said the current rules on tags "fall far short of what people have a right to expect".

A spokesman for Mr Clarke said: 'These figures reveal the full extent of Labour's failure on community sentencing.

"The current Government is bringing in reforms to make sure that these sentences are more robust, use the latest technology and do not let offenders off the hook.

"A community sentence has to be a proper punishment which is effective in deterring criminals from going further in the cycle of crime.'

Ministry of Justice data also discloses that 68.2 per cent of under-18s spared jail and instead told to remain indoors at night went on to commit another crime in the year to June 2010.

The proportion is only slightly lower than the 69.8 per cent recorded a decade earlier.

However the number of youths given curfews has risen fivefold from 199 to 1,096, and the number of re-offences has increased from 596 to 2,778.

Overall, 66 per cent of youths given community orders instead of prison terms went on to commit more crime within a year of being sentenced.

Probation inspectors found that, following many curfew breaches, they could not find out who was in charge of offenders' cases, while court staff made "basic errors" on forms. More than half of all offenders breached their curfews in some way.

A separate report on the £100 million - a - year tagging regime, published today by the probation union Napo, states that there are often problems with the electronic devices, which reportedly stop working if offenders sit in metal baths or live in remote areas. It calls into question the Government's plan to expand electronic tagging, which could lead to 180,000 criminals being monitored by satellite 24 hours a day.