I had a pretty unusual day today. This morning I met a man who has been on the run from police for two weeks.
Casey Cowan is a man with a history of violence. He's done time for aggravated robbery and other crimes.
He was near the end of his sentence, but he made the stupid decision to cut off his home detention bracelet and try to evade police.
When he ran, Child Youth and Family (CYF) took his son away from his partner for the child's protection.
So today, he wanted to meet me because he wanted some help to try and make all that right.
Story asked police for a response this afternoon and all we got was confirmation of what happened, which we knew because we were there.
Corrections, on the other hand, was more forthcoming. It has told us there are currently 17 people at large who have absconded after tampering with electronic anklets.
It says there hasn't been a spike in those numbers lately. The numbers have been stable "around the 18 mark" – roughly less than 0.5 percent of the offenders on electronic monitoring.
But here's the key statement in all this, from CYF: "We absolutely reject any suggestion that Child Youth and Family made this baby's return subject to his father returning to custody. In truth, Mr Cowan demanded exactly this of social workers, who rejected any such deal."
Watch the video for the full Story report.
