One third of UK's young offenders return to crime, Ministry of Justice statistics show Of those, 47,349 - or 32 per cent - committed another crime within 12 months. Dee Edwards, of the crime victims charity R and K Foundation, said: "If we are tough on people when they first offend and give them deterrent sentences at the outset they will not want to go back to crime. It is important to tackle offending at an early stage to stop young people becoming repeat offenders at the first opportunity. Separate figures show prisoners who are released early from jail and breach their conditions are remaining at large. They were all on home detention curfew at the time, meaning they had been released from jail even earlier than most prisoners but still abused their opportunity. The figures are a further blow for the electronic tagging scheme which was mired in controversy earlier this year amid allegations that the two companies running it had overcharged the taxpayer by tens of millions of pounds. The scale of the missing offenders was described last night as "deeply disturbing" and an "appalling failure" of the criminal justice system. Home detention curfew (HDC) allows prisoners out up to 135 days earlier than their normal release date - which is often around the half way point of their sentence. Those on HDC have to abide by certain conditions and are fitted with an electronic tag. Since the scheme was introduced in 1999, 97 offenders who should have been recalled to custody have gone missing. Five have been missing since 1999 and 32 have been on the run for more than a decade. Most tags only inform the authorities whether the offender is in their designated property during curfew hours. Ministers are looking at introducing satellite tagging, which can monitor an offender wherever they are, using GPS tracking. Priti Patel, a Conservative MP, said: "It is deeply disturbing that these offenders have been allowed to disappear from the system and it now falls upon this government to reform the system to prevent such appalling failures from taking place again." A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "Over the last 10 years, more than 99 per cent of offenders recalled to custody have been successfully returned to prison. Public protection is our priority and the authorities will tirelessly pursue such cases to ensure these offenders are brought to justice.