Dugard case prompts effort to improve sex offender supervision

8-4-2011 California:

With the Phillip Garrido fiasco as a backdrop, legislative and law enforcement leaders agreed Wednesday to work toward preventing a similar one.

In a meeting at the Capitol convened by state Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, and El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, officials discussed the failures that led to Jaycee Lee Dugard remaining captive for 18 years and offered ideas on how to improve supervision of sex offenders. .......

Dugard was kidnapped at age 11 in 1991, and was found alive in August 2009.

Various investigations have determined that federal – and later state – parole agents failed in their supervision of Garrido, who had a lengthy criminal history and was on parole for a 1976 kidnapping and rape when he and his wife, Nancy, abducted Dugard.

Lee Seale, director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's internal oversight division, said that as soon as Dugard was discovered alive, his department launched two internal probes of how agents missed her presence on the Garridos' Antioch property.

Both probes found "serious shortcomings," Seale said, adding that the department is working to improve its supervision of sex offenders.

There was little dispute that there had been a massive series of failures to detect Dugard's presence as a captive. Pierson, who won guilty pleas from the Garridos in April, noted that the public may never know the full extent of his crimes.

He said Garrido told investigators earlier this year that he had committed other abductions, as well as dozens of date rapes.

Garrido claimed he had never killed anyone, but made it clear that he had no problem lying to authorities if he didn't want them to know about some crimes.

"He was fairly proud of that," Pierson said. ..Source.. by Sam Stanton