BOLTON is to be part of a new Home Office pilot scheme targeting teen offenders with electronic tags.

Youth courts in six street crime blackspots across Britain will be given the powers to tag mugging suspects as young as 12 while they are on bail, from April 22 .

Greater Manchester, including Bolton, heads the list.

Also included are Inner London, the West Midlands, Northumbria, Thames Valley and Avon and Somerset. The scheme is expected to go nationwide in June.

The move today received a cautious welcome from Bolton North East MP David Crausby.

"It is a measure that has got to be considered," he said. "We have a problem with youth crime and police and the authorities have got to be given powers to deal with it."

But Cllr Frank White, Bolton Council's executive member for social inclusion, said there was a shortage secure accommodation for young offenders. He believed the Home Office should concentrate on that rather than pushing forward with tagging schemes. "There may be a place for tagging but I want to see the results of research first," he said.

But speaking about the plan, Home Secretary David Blunkett said today: "People are sick and tired of them (young criminals) being put back on the street unsupervised, untagged and insecure, actually carrying on what they did before."

In 1995 Bolton took part in Greater Manchester trials of tagging convicted criminals but the sanction was rarely used.

In other areas piloting the scheme it was branded a flop, with many tagged offenders breaking their curfews.

The latest proposed tagging system comprises a small radio transmitter, known as a Personal Identification Device (PID), about the size of a diver's watch, which is attached to the offender's ankle and sends a signal to a monitoring unit when the offender is due to be at home under curfew.

Teenage mugging in Bolton is a regular occurrence. Last month a 71-year-old woman suffered a fractured shoulder and hip when she was mugged in Great Lever for her handbag. Her attacker was aged around 17.