NC- GPS Tracking Of Sex Offenders Doesn't Watch Every Move

4-2-2009 North Carolina:

Winston-Salem, NC - Judges are more and more ordering sex offenders to have to wear a GPS monitoring system upon release.

In February, police charged Elbert Jeffries, Jr., after they say he visited a local middle school not once, not twice, but four times. Jeffries is a registered sex offender. He was wearing a GPS device that notifies police of his whereabouts.

A 2 Wants to Know investigation looks into how police actually uses the system.

"This is naturally like a GPS system like you have for your car," Chris Oxendine, Division of Community Corrections.

But unlike the one in your car, this one has a more critical purpose. Using an ankle bracelet and a transmitter worn like a pager, probation officers can watch a sex offender's every move.

The system can alert officers if the subject tries to remove the device or venture too close to prohibited area like a playground or school, though it's just about impossible to do.

"Do we have cases where people despite having a GPS monitor on will re-offend or commit crimes? Does that happen? Oh yes. Probationers can commit crimes while they're on probation. It's the same situation," says Oxendine.

Oxendine admits the GPS tracking does not prevent crime.

Consider the case of Elbert Jeffries, Jr., a 26-year-old convicted of trying to have sex with a 13-year-old girl. A judge sentenced him to 45 days in jail, three years probation and GPS monitoring. In February, police say Jeffries sat outside the downtown middle school in Winston-Salem four different times before they knew he was there, even with the GPS secured to his ankle.

"He might have gotten brave and actually gone inside the school. And there are kids outside the school all the time waiting for family to pick them up. So there was a chance that a child was put at risk. Even your child. My child especially," says Elisa Lark.

Lark has a daughter that attends the school Jeffries visited. She's the exact age of his victim in 2006. Lark was surprised to hear that the GPS was not set up to know where sex offenders were at all times. "I think that might need to be changed."

Probation and police do not have the manpower to have someone sit in front of a computer screen all day and watch each particular person. Instead, probation officers just check-up on an offender to see where he has been, and then ask about any suspicious behavior. The hope is the offender will be scared into walking the straight and narrow.

"To me that sounds like it's after the fact. It's too late once you find out he's been somewhere he shouldn't have been and something happened," says Lark.

Too late with regard to convicted rapist Brandon Legrande. Despite wearing a GPS device, Legrande still broke into a house just a year after his release from prison.

And that's not all. Add to that the fact GPS signals can have up to a four-minute delay.

That is plenty of time for a suspect to commit a crime and make their getaway.

A fear Elisa Lark has that GPS can't protect the community from the likes of Elbert Jeffries.

"I think that he may be likely to do it again. He has not shown that he can follow the rules."

There is good news, a study by Florida State University found offenders on GPS are 90% less likely to re-offend. The question is what will happen in the remaining 10-percent? Forsyth County currently tracks only three sex offenders via GPS. But that number is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years.

The price tag for the GPS monitoring has been cited in other states as high as 8 dollars a day for each offender. ..News Source.. by Alan Wagmeister