- Government officials defend themselves after losing track of scores of offenders
- A Telstra mobile outage meant NT corrections couldn’t monitor ankle tags
- The issue took three days to be fully rectified, and affected about 85 bracelets
- NT corrections said ankle tags were not the only way of monitoring offenders
A network outage has led to corrections officers losing contact with scores of dangerous criminals – an error which took three days to rectify.
A mobile outage on Telstra’s G4S service meant Northern Territory Correctional Services were unable to keep track of 85 offenders wearing electronic ankle tags.
A Correctional Services spokesman told AAP they identified ‘approximately 85 electronic monitoring devices… as having unresolved communication issues’ at 8.10am on May 4.
Government officials have defended themselves in the wake of a network outage which led to them losing contact with scores of dangerous criminals (stock image)
A mobile outage on Telstra’s G4S service meant Northern Territory Correctional Services were unable to keep track of 85 offenders wearing electronic ankle tags
‘By 11.30am, 23 had been resolved. By Saturday May 5, seven remained unresolved.’
The spokesman said the devices were all restored by May 8.
Electronic tags are used to monitor offenders whose movements are restricted, including those on home detention, or who are not allowed to go to certain places such as a park or school.
An NT Correctional Services spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia using ankle bracelets was not the only way they monitor offenders.
She said Correctional Services has no choice but to use Telstra’s G4S network as it is mandated by the government.
Electronic ankle bracelets use GPS technology to monitor the location of offenders.
Frustrated mobile users flooded Telstra’s website on Monday morning to check whether the outages were continuing, only to be met with error messages
Telstra said the outage was caused by damage to a fibre link after a cable pit in New South Wales’ central west was hit by lightning.
The damage caused some triple-zero emergency calls to drop out for 10 hours across five states.
A nationwide disruption on Telstra’s 4G network caused chaos across Australia on Monday.
Frustrated mobile users flooded Telstra’s website on Monday morning to check whether the outages were continuing, only to be met with error messages.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Telstra for comment.
An NT Correctional Services spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia using ankle bracelets was not the only way they monitor offenders (Darwin pictured)
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