CA- Another view: What we did wrong, and right

9-11-2009 California:


Fractured management, poor communication left tragic opening.

Over the past 18 years, Jaycee Dugard suffered through an unimaginable ordeal, the details of which are just starting to become clear. While specific missteps or missed opportunities to intervene earlier and more effectively might be identified over time, one significant public safety problem is already clear:

Phillip Garrido was able to offend, largely unnoticed, due to a fractured approach to sex offender management. This approach didn't include active communication and collaboration among law enforcement and public safety agencies, clinical offender management resources and community members.

Despite these clear and worrying problems, there are important things that went right:

Members of the community did the right thing. They saw suspicious behavior and called local law enforcement to follow up. Public safety depends on community members sharing concerns about the potentially risky behavior they observe.

Officers Allyson Jacobs and Lisa Campbell were heroic, and shared exactly the kind of information needed between law enforcement agencies and corrections officials. The two University of California-Berkeley campus patrol officers first became suspicious of Garrido after seeing him handing out flyers alongside two children (later identified as Dugard's daughters).

There are also a few popular sex offender laws that seem to have not made much difference.

Garrido was subject to monitoring by global positioning device, but because he was at home, where he was supposed to be, he did not violate any of the provisions of that monitoring. One of the limitations of this promising technology is that it will show where a person is, but not whom he is with or what he is doing.

Many sex offenders under parole are subject to recent changes in California's residency restrictions, which preclude them from living near schools or parks. In this case, the restrictions did not make a difference because Garrido's property was compliant with the law.

What can we do?

The three victims of this crime and their families will likely require substantial resources and support in the near and long term. It is essential that state and local services be adequately prepared to provide ongoing assistance.

Tools such as GPS and parole supervision can fall tragically short when jurisdictions don't work together to develop comprehensive strategies to share information and communicate about supervision practices. This tragic case highlights the need for systemic changes that will promote collaboration between agencies and the community at large.

Community safety depends on what we see, what we know and how we talk to each other. ..Source of Opinion.. by Suzanne Brown-McBride is executive director of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA) and the chair of the California Sex Offender Management Board. Over the past two decades, she has been a nationally recognized expert in sexual violence, crime victims' rights and sex offender management. For more information, visit http://calcasa.org.