Last week South Coast MP Shelley Hancock demanded the Attorney General and Minister for Justice Greg Smith launch an investigation into the escape.

Mrs Hancock said she has been advised by the Attorney General that an investigation is currently under way.

“The attorney has also sought information form the NSW Police and they have advised that a formal response is due on completion of the investigation,” Mrs Hancock said.

Mrs Hancock raised significant concerns about the operation and management of the South Coast Correctional Facility and the safety of neighbouring residential properties.

“Nearby residents were not informed by correction centre staff that an inmate had escaped, distressing locals and generating a panic in the community,” she said.

She said she had full confidence that the Shoalhaven Local Area Command would apprehend the escapee, however was concerned that a similar incident may occur in the future, and that appropriate alerts were not conveyed to local residents.  

Meanwhile Corrective Services NSW has questioned the figures in last Wednesday’s article about the number of escapes from NSW Correctional Centres.

A Corrective Services NSW spokesperson said three weeks out from the end of this financial year, there have been nine escapes from NSW Correctional Centres compared to 24 in 2011-12 and 29 in 2010-11.

“This overall decline in the number of escapes is attributed to a combination of measures including improvements to prison security and management of inmates within NSW Correctional Centres,” the spokesperson said.

“This escape is the second to occur from South Coast Correctional Centre since 2010, when the centre began operating. The previous escape was in 2011 and involved a minimum security inmate who was recaptured,” the spokesperson said.

“As with any escape from custody, an investigation is under way and its results will be considered.”

But a number of questions from the South Coast Register to Corrective Services NSW regarding the escape have gone unanswered.

Like why residents in the local area were not notified there had been an escape and the procedures put in place for theses types of occurrences; why it took half an hour from the time Mr Duke went missing to when police were notified; how a medium security prisoner managed to escape from low security and how he escaped in the first place?

We await our answers.

Similar questions were asked of NSW Police media, with some of them, including how Duke escaped and why a medium security prisoner was in fact in low security, were referred to Corrective Services.

“We can’t really speak on those issues, they are up to Corrective Services,” the spokesperson said.

As for residents not being contacted the spokesperson said in the first instance the polices response would have been to try and apprehend the escapee.

“Their main focus would have been to track down the escapee while he was still in the local area,” the spokesperson said.

“Perhaps the police were acting on specific information that pointed to a particular area and that may be why they bypassed residents.

“Maybe they were focusing on areas so they could rule them out.”

“Usually though they (officers) do stop and talk to people, talking to members of the public is often one of the best ways for officers to gain information.

“But certainly it is often not possible to talk to every single person in the area.

“Officers’ main focus is to try and catch the offender.

“The media unit had a press release about the fact out within two hours notifying what had happened.”