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National | Corrections

Convicted child sex offender located and arrested

Absconder Daniel Livingstone has been located and arrested by police this afternoon in Naenae.  Livingstone is a convicted child sex offender who was recently released from prison with a monitored ankle bracelet.

He took off his monitor in the middle of the night, then fled his residence.

Labour's Corrections spokesperson Kelvin Davis says this is a huge problem that needs to be addressed.

Church is the call of the day for Kelvin Davis.  But he's not blessing offenders who have been able to remove their monitoring bracelets.

Kelvin Davis says, “Useless! The job that police officers and Corrections staff did to let this guy run, it's shocking!”

Davis says the situation is unacceptable and there should be strict measures to deal with offenders who have shown no signs of rehabilitation.

It took seven hours after Livingstone's ankle bracelet was tampered with, before Police entered his home.

Davis says, “They need to have a watch list for the worse offenders so they are monitored more carefully and caught much more swiftly!”

Law professors say the situation is bad timing for Corrections, so soon after Tony Robertson was jailed for 24 years for raping and killing Blessie Gotingo while on GPS monitoring.

“If they had acted more decisively after the Robertson case, then maybe this situation with Livingstone wouldn't have happened,” says Davis.

The Minister didn't want to speak on camera today, however he said ankle monitoring is one of a number of tools utilised by Corrections and that it is simply not good enough.

He also said Police and Corrections must work together to achieve quicker and more effective response times.