Date: 2011-01-19 Nakatsuru J. | Link

Hearing into the alleged breach of a house arrest provision of a conditional sentence, supervised using an electronic monitoring device. The defence suggested that a false alert was generated by the electronic monitoring system. At para 73, the court observes "(w)hile it has been widely and long used, nothing created by human hands is infallible.  No system is free from error.  However, the issue is not whether electronic monitoring is perfect.  Rather, as I see it, the issue is whether this electric monitoring system of Serco Geografix Ltd. is sufficiently reliable and accurate for a court to attribute significant weight to the inference that an offender is no longer within the geographical confines required by his curfew or house arrest order when an absence alert is generated." After receiving evidence from the system supplier in addition to other analysis, he concludes on balance of probabilities that the signal of an breach was valid. Most of the decision deals with what the court considered in concluding that the electronic evidence was reliable in this particular instance.