A VIOLENT criminal who was released on home detention bail was arrested by police yesterday after correctional services lost track of him on Friday when ankle bracelet tracking devices malfunctioned due to a Telstra outage.
Robert Stehr was released from Mount Gambier Prison on Friday after he was granted home detention bail to reside at a premises in Adelaide.
After having the home detention bracelet fitted, Stehr caught a bus from Mount Gambier to Adelaide, however at some point during the journey, the device stopped working.
Stehr was unable to be located by the authorities until 9am yesterday morning when he was arrested without incident on Murray Street in Gawler.
He has been charged with breaching bail and was expected to appear in court yesterday.
The bracelet malfunction – which led to Stehr absconding – was caused by an issue in Telstra’s supplier’s network, which resulted in intermittent authentication of devices.
It lasted from Friday morning until around midday on Saturday, causing issues to consumers all around the country.
A Telstra spokesperson said their team worked through the night on Friday to restore services.
“The issue was a complex one involving multiple providers across a number of locations,” they said.
“It took time for our suppler to isolate the faulty equipment and the initial equipment restoration attempts were unsuccessful, which contributed to the time taken to get devices back online.”
Premier Steven Marshall condemned the outage and said the government would make sure it did not happen again.
“Clearly this is an unacceptable situation and clearly this is a situation that we cannot afford to occur again,” Mr Marshall said.
“There will be a full investigation and we will keep the people of South Australia updated.”
A service provider for other GPS tracking services at correctional facilities around the country, questions remain as to why Telstra’s outage affected the South Australian system.
Correctional Services Minister Corey Wingard said he hoped to ascertain why South Australia was the only state where bracelets were affected.
“That is something that we just do not accept from Telstra and we will deal with them on that this week,” he said.
During the outage, correctional services made phone calls and conducted home visits to try to locate over 700 offenders who were left unmonitored for over 24 hours.
It was not until Sunday that South Australian Police revealed Stehr – accused of attempted theft using force – could not be located, despite “numerous enquiries” by SAPOL and correctional services.
Correctional Services Department chief executive David Brown said it was unclear why Stehr was unable to be monitored once the system was restored.
“Until such time as we recover the device, we will not be able to establish why that device did not reconnect with the network,” Mr Brown said.
Shadow correctional services minister Lee Odenwalder demanded answers from the government about its lack of action after the first failure of the electronic tracking of criminals in May.
“In May, the electronic tracking system, which tracks people on bail, went down for two hours and at that time Premier Steven Marshall promised a review,” Mr Odenwalder said.
“On Friday, we saw a much more substantial breakdown of the system – more than 700 people went completely off the radar and we saw a dangerous fugitive at large for nearly three days.”
