Dangerous sex offenders face being forced to take lie detector tests on their release from jail, it has emerged.
Paedophiles and rapists will be made to answer a series of questions about their intentions while hooked up to a polygraph machine.
The results could see the terms of their release restricted or, in the most serious cases, land them back in prison.
It follows a series of pilots launched by Labour in April 2009 that ran until October 2011 in the East and West Midlands. That found offenders on lie detectors made twice as many admissions about contacting victims or entering an exclusion zone than without.
Offenders also reported that the tests helped them to better manage their own behaviour, according to the government.
There are about 3,000 sex offenders being managed on licence in the community at any one time, with more than 750 considered to be the most serious - the category affected by the proposals.
A Downing Street source said: "It's vital that we protect the public from serious sex offenders.
"That's why the conditions after they leave prison need to be both strict and rigorously enforced.
"The pilot schemes using lie detectors to manage offenders in the community have been a success.
"So now we're looking at how it could be rolled out to provide probation officers with more information to manage the most serious sex offenders."
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