A convicted child sex offender has been arrested at an ex-girlfriend's home in the southern Sydney suburb of Menai.
The man, who now cannot be identified following the issue of a suppression order by the Victorian County Court, failed to return to his approved place of residence outside Ararat Prison in western Victoria after visiting Melbourne for a medical procedure, police said.
It's believed the man slipped out the back door of a cafe at Fairfield, in the city's inner north, when he left his corrections supervisor to go to the toilet.
Inspector Rod Hart of Sutherland police said the man was arrested without incident about 6pm (AEDT) on Thursday, following a tip-off from Victorian police an hour earlier.
"He was found at the house of an associate of his. I believe it's an ex-girlfriend," Inspector Hart told AAP.
"We went to the address and he was in bed, asleep.
"It looks like he might have come up to Sydney on the train but we're not sure when he got here.
"He didn't give us any problems.
"He's downstairs pacing around in his cell because he knows he's going back to Victoria for a long time."
The man will appear in the Sutherland Magistrates' Court on Friday, where Victorian detectives are expected to apply for his extradition.
Earlier on Thursday, the head of Victoria's corrections regime refused to admit there were serious cracks in the extended supervision order system, despite the man's escape.
The man, who is intellectually impaired, had just received treatment at the Disability Forensic Assessment Treatment Services centre in Fairfield and wanted lunch on a nearby cafe strip, Station Street.
He escaped through the back door of a cafe after telling his supervisor he needed a toilet break.
After five or six minutes, the female officer realised he had fled.
The man has served his jail time but lives at a secure compound next to Ararat prison under the conditions of his extended supervision order (ESO).
Corrections Victoria commissioner Bob Hastings said the department would launch a review of the incident, but went on to say the officer supervising the man had done nothing wrong.
"The person that was with this particular person had done everything that was required of them in terms of the supervision," he told reporters in Melbourne on Thursday.
"The ESO system is working very well."
The man is one of 34 sex offenders currently on ESOs, but some live in the community rather than at Corella.
"They (people on ESOs) are not prisoners. They've actually done their time for the crime," Mr Hastings said.
"We are managing them within a regime that says that we supervise them, but we supervise them as community members.
"The supervisor is there to ... support them, to help them."
Mr Hastings said it was the offender's responsibility to comply with the conditions of ESOs, and the focus was on supporting those people rather than containing them.
He said Corrections Victoria was considering tracking people on ESOs with GPS devices, but the technology had limitations.
"GPS will tell you where someone is, it doesn't necessarily tell you what they're doing," he said.
"The other thing with GPS (tracking devices) is that you can cut them off."
The man's ESO expires in 2016.
There have been three escapes, including the man's two transgressions, since the ESO system was introduced by the state government in 2005.
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