'Black spots' land bailed man in jail

An electronic monitoring bracelet. Photo / Rotorua Daily Post.

People are being arrested and locked up overnight for flouting electronic bail - despite never having left their home.

Tony Gabriel-Hutchins has spent two nights behind bars in recent weeks because "black spots" in his house make his electronic bracelet send an alarm that he's left the property.

Police have turned up and arrested him, holding him overnight until he appeared in court the next day.

Police can't say how many people on bail have been affected, but a spokesman conceded "environmental factors" make the electronic bracelets unreliable in some areas.

Gabriel-Hutchins, an unemployed 26-year-old, is waiting to appear in court in February on firearms charges. He was released from custody on electronic bail recently and since then he's stayed with his grandparents on the Te Atatu Peninsula.

"Thursday night it went off and I spent the night [in jail] and got out, then on Friday it went off again.

"The police took a few hours to get here. They said there was a six-minute gap in the monitor reading. I was here.

"They just arrested me and took me back to the station and chucked me in the cells for the night. I've had witnesses here to say that I've been here the whole time."

Gabriel-Hutchins was charged with breach of bail, which he said was unfair because it was a technical fault rather than a breach.

Last weekend he was worried it would go off and force him to spend Christmas inside.

"I'd rather them make some sort of system where they should ring up the house and make sure I'm here so I don't get arrested all the time."

The system works on a radio frequency between the bracelet and a monitoring unit, which sits in the house. The unit is connected to a monitoring centre at Chubb.

In some cases a voice recognition device can be installed, meaning the bailee can answer voice commands to prove they're home.

"Nearly always when we install the voice recognition, the pattern of absences ceases,' said national police electronic monitoring bail manager Lindsay Talbot.