“DID you speed on the way here?”

I am sitting in front of Kayley Parsons, a probation officer with years of experience handling dangerous, sometimes deceitful, hardened criminals.

Julia Atherley sitting on a bench with a GPS tag on her ankle.The Sun’s Julia Atherley had a GPS tag fitted Credit: Roland Leon A close-up of a person's lower legs and feet, showing a GPS monitoring tag attached to one ankle.The tag tracked Julia’s every movement Credit: Roland Leon

On a huge screen in front of me is a map of Nottinghamshire populated with small yellow dots.

The blobs plot my drive from HMP Ranby, a category C near Retford, to the probation office next to Mansfield train station.

The route is so precise it can see where I lingered in heavy traffic – and where I took a wrong turn before eventually finding somewhere to park.

Before I left the jail I had a fitted which would track my every movement.

My ankle was measured by field monitoring officer Gemma before I was handed a charger which I was told to plug into the wall for an hour every day.

Handily my tag also came with a portable charger so there could be no excuses for letting it run out of battery.

On a busy day this Nottinghamshire prison can release 25 men at the end of their sentence.

This week I was one of them, stepping out from the reception block before heading straight to my probation meeting.

Later this year, thousands of criminals will be in a bid

As a result the number of lags serving their sentences in the community is set to skyrocket – and ankle tags will be key to that.

After parking up in Mansfield town centre I walked to the probation office.

I suddenly wished I had worn baggy trousers which would have covered the huge black box strapped to my ankle as I walked past shoppers and groups of kids.

A woman stands in front of a screen displaying a map with a yellow dotted line showing Julia Atherley's GPS-tagged route from HMP Ranby prison.Julia in front of a map of Nottinghamshire populated with small yellow dots showing her journey Credit: Roland Leon A woman wearing a "HMP Ranby Visitor Pass" stands outside a prison gate.Julia at HMP Ranby, a category C prison near Retford Credit: Roland Leon

My probation officer, Kayley, noted that I got here sooner than she had expected so she clicks on one of the yellow dots on the A614.

As well as telling her exactly what time I was there, she happily tells me it can also detect the speed I was travelling.

I breathe a sigh of relief as it tells her I was going at a safe 55 mph.

But a huge sea of red about halfway through my drive showed Kayley I had driven straight through my exclusion zone, which had been set as the village of Ollerton.

If I was a real criminal who had just been given my first taste of freedom I would be recalled straight back to jail.

Victims of abuse will be able to have a say as to where the zones are drawn up, making it less likely they could come face-to-face with their offender by accident.