Technology keeps eye on sex offenders

2-19-2008 Missouri:

Nobody wants them. But everyone wants to know where they are.

So cities and states are forging new laws and using the latest technologies to keep tabs on hundreds of thousands of convicted sex offenders.

Their home addresses are considered public information. Some wear bracelets that can be tracked by satellite and cell phone towers. Others are forced to give their online identities and screen names to parole officers. Some communities are limiting where offenders can live.

The ability to track them, safety advocates say, is one of the best ways to protect the public. If you know where the bad people are, they say, it's easier to keep an eye on them. Or to avoid them altogether.

Critics, however, say new laws and restrictions make it impossible for sex offenders to be anything more than social outcasts. And there are those who worry about putting so much emphasis on what they characterize as a small piece of the sexual crime problem.

There are a host of online databases — often free to use — that can pinpoint nearby sex offenders. Search by city or ZIP code. Check everyone within a mile of your house.

That's what Courtney McIntyre did two years ago when she was shopping for a house in Collinsville. She found a half dozen sex offenders — including one right down the street from her new home.

"It does bother me. Every time I drive by, I look at his house," said McIntyre, who has three children. And unless her husband is around, she said, "we don't walk down that end of the street."

Registries aren't new. Most are the result of laws passed nationwide after a 7-year-old New Jersey girl, Megan Kanka, was raped and murdered in 1994 by a neighbor who turned out to be a twice-convicted sex offender.

What's changing is the ease of access and the options available. More than 600,000 registered sex offenders can be found in state and national databases, run both by government and private industry. Along with limited details of the crime committed, you can often find mug shots, aerial photos of the offender's residence and maps of the surrounding area.

New Hampshire-based Ektron Inc., which has been working with the Pennsylvania attorney general, is developing a system that would send an e-mail alert whenever an offender has moved into the neighborhood. It would eliminate the need for people to do their own frequent searches, said Ed Rogers, the company's chief operating officer.

Not everyone is a fan, however. While registries have survived legal challenges, some people worry about the impact they have on the sex offenders trying to put their lives back together. No other class of criminal, they argue, is treated with such scrutiny.

"Why don't we have registries of burglars and those who do assaults?" asked Evan Harrington, a professor of psychology at the Chicago School. "Why is it just sex crimes?"

That's one of the things that bothers Ricky Cole, a registered offender who lives in downtown St. Louis. Cole, who was convicted of statutory rape, has been out of prison for three years.

"They need to be investigating why kids are walking around with guns as big as they are," Cole said. "They're worried about the wrong thing."

A STRONGER APPROACH

Studies have shown that sex offenders are less likely than other criminals to get in trouble again. A landmark Justice Department study in 1994 showed that 43 percent of sex offenders were arrested for a new crime — 5.3 percent for another sex offense — within three years of being paroled from prison. The arrest rate of those who were not sex offenders was 68 percent.

Such studies, however, have been called unreliable by safety advocates, who say many sex crimes, particularly incest and child molestation, are never reported to police.

Note: This is not true and if folks goto the study shown above and review the charts you will see that the Justice Department addressed this specific issue in that study.

"It's absolutely necessary for the public to be able to see where the sex offenders live," said Stacie Rumenap, executive director of Stop Child Predators, a nonprofit in Washington. "It's not a punishment. It's a public safety issue."

Her group is part of a growing nationwide movement that says simply knowing the offender's street address isn't enough.

Sparked by the 2005 rape and murder of a 9-year-old Florida girl, many states are taking a more forceful approach, particularly against violent offenders or those who sexually assault children.

A hallmark of Florida's Jessica Lunsford Act is mandatory lifetime GPS tracking after an offender is released from prison. The idea has caught on, with dozens of states enacting similar laws.

Such monitoring costs around $20 a month for each offender. Generally using a mixture of GPS and cellular networks, offenders can be monitored passively or actively. Their movements might be checked only if there is a question about recent travels, or they might be watched constantly by someone at a computer screen.

"They leave a trail of virtual bread crumbs," said Alex Brisbourne, president of KORE Telematics, a company that provides network service for tracking systems.

It's also possible to declare certain areas, or even people, off-limits through the use of virtual fences and personal monitors. Previous victims, for example, could be notified whenever their attacker is nearby, said Daniel Graff-Radford, a vice president with Omnilink Systems, a Georgia company that monitors offenders for 100 agencies in 38 states.

"The victim would get an alert, followed by directions on how to get away," he said.

And in what some characterize as an extreme variation of tracking technology, an Ohio company is promoting a device — which anyone could buy — that would vibrate whenever a bracelet-wearing sex offender comes within 50 yards.

For the American Civil Liberties Union, these registries and tracking plans are little more than a new way to punish men and women who have already paid their debts.

"It's not giving them a chance to have a life after they've done their time," said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU office in St. Louis. "It opens them up to harm by labeling them and pointing them out to everyone."

There also remain questions about the constitutionality of tracking bracelets, which have yet to receive the same legal stamp of approval given to registries.

"The electronic tracking thing is really new," said Eric Miller, assistant professor of law at St. Louis University. "No one is quite clear about how it's going to play out."

'UNREALISTIC ANSWER'

With so much attention focused on technology and ways to track paroled offenders, some advocates for children say there is a danger the public will let down its guard.

Most children, after all, are abused by family members and trusted friends, said Marci Hamilton, a law professor and author of the upcoming book "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children."

"It's just an unrealistic answer. It's built on quicksand," Hamilton said. "Just because you know there's a predator down the street, don't think you've identified all of the threats in your neighborhood."

Advocates say another problem is that some laws treat all offenders equally for purposes of registration. Lumping all offenders — from teen lovers to predatory child molesters — into a single group can actually make registries weaker, said Kevin McDonald, chairman of Web Wise Kids, a national organization that teaches children about online safety.

"If they all get thrown in together, the real hard-core sickos are going to get lost in the mix," McDonald said. ..more.. by Tim Barker, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
tbarker@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8350