Cuttable straps

More than $10 million was spent on an electronic monitoring system that included 300 ankle bracelets with straps that were not “cut-resistant”. This allowed several offenders to tamper with the devices and abscond.

The disclosure was made yesterday during a meeting of the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on National Security, which examined the implementation of the country’s electronic monitoring system.

Electronic Monitoring manager Lawrence Hinds told the committee that following a review, the “legacy” system will eventually be discarded and replaced by a newer system featuring more secure, cut-resistant monitoring devices—at an additional cost to taxpayers.