7-18-2010 California:
For the last three weeks of April, more than 20 local sex offenders strapped with GPS monitoring units went unsupervised by state parole agents.
The good news -- so far as we know -- is that nothing happened. None of the offenders killed, robbed, raped, kidnapped or otherwise abused any unsuspecting citizens, again, that we know of.
Even so, it's not all's well that ends well. Far from it.
The Bakersfield situation is just the latest example of what appears to be a systemic problem with the statewide GPS sex offender program and comes on the heels of scathing criticism of how the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has managed that program.
Two special reports by the state Office of the Inspector General found Corrections' GPS policies were confused at best and non-existent at worst.
The full technological abilities of the system aren't being used, agents and supervisors aren't properly trained and agents are so overloaded with GPS busy work they aren't able to do other vitally important checks in the field, according to the reports.
Overall, the reports concluded, Corrections is not aggressively monitoring sex offenders and the public is being given a "false sense of security."
Field work suffering
The reports were done in response to two high-profile and tragic cases.
One delved into how Phillip Garrido was able to allegedly kidnap and hide Jaycee Dugard for nearly two decades in his backyard, fathering two children by her, while on parole during all those years and on GPS monitoring at least part of the time.
The second report looked at John Gardner, who raped and murdered two teen girls in San Diego after having violated parole numerous times while on GPS for a previous sex offense.
Both men were on "passive" GPS monitoring, as they were deemed lower-risk offenders. High-risk offenders are known as "active" GPS parolees.
The practical difference is that agents must monitor active parolees' GPS "tracks" daily. Tracks are dots showing exactly where the parolee is at any given time. Passive parolee tracks are checked over two 48-hour periods per month, essentially four out of 30 days.
Luckily, a Garrido or Gardner nightmare didn't come true in Bakersfield while GPS parolees went unwatched for several weeks.
And while it was an extreme aberration for three weeks to pass without supervision, at least one Bakersfield caseload roster from earlier in April shows a variety of non-GPS required checks were routinely missed -- even on parolees deemed "high risk sex offenders."
Those checks range from all-important home visits to drug testing and visits to family and friends.
It could be the agent simply didn't mark down that he'd done those checks, which a supervisor should have caught.
Or, it could be, as the Gardner report states, GPS busy work is shunting aside necessary field work.
Part of that so-called busy work involves alerts sent by GPS units for a multitude of reasons, low batteries, lost signal for an unknown reason, entering a prohibited zone such as near a school, etc.
In response to the Gardner report, Corrections implemented a policy in March requiring that all alerts had to be "cleared" by agents.
But records obtained by the San Diego Union-Tribune showed 31,000 unresolved alerts between March and June.
Most alerts were minor, some were not. And some stem from Corrections policies that require agents to create GPS restriction zones on parolees that don't constitute crimes.
Nighttime curfews, for instance, can't be mandated on offenders unless they regularly committed their crimes at night. But curfew zones are routine, causing more alerts.
In Region 1, mostly Kern County, there were 49 unresolved alerts between March and the end of June, according to Corrections spokeswoman Jessica Mazlum.
"This does not mean that the agent has not investigated or addressed these GPS alerts. It only means that, for these parolees, the agent has not checked the box," showing the alert was cleared.
OK, but it also doesn't mean the alert was cleared. The box wasn't checked so there's no way to know what happened with the alert or even whether it was of a serious nature.
It seems to me that what the policy really means is one more headache for agents.
All of which begs the question: Is the GPS program so flawed or mismanaged that it's actually jeopardizing public safety?
Adding more straws
"Parole agents are so busy tracking dots on a computer screen, they're not out making home visits, checking the guy's workplace, talking to family members," said Melinda Silva, president of the Parole Agents Association of California.
"Agents are spending the bulk of their time running tracks including at home and on the weekends."
Jessica's Law, passed in 2006, started the ball rolling on lifetime GPS monitoring of sex offenders. Then the Garrido report added more responsibilities and the Gardner report still more.
California leads the nation in GPS monitored parolees -- 6,500 -- at a cost of $60 million a year. Depending on arrests, there are typically about 250 sex offender parolees on GPS in Kern County.
Silva said the state isn't taking into account how the program has increased agents' workload and whether the work is actually accomplishing what the public expects.
"People believe the GPS means we know where they are 24/7 and we don't," Silva said. "We're paying millions for GPS and we're not getting much out of it because agents don't have time to do the work."
Now, she said, State Sen. George Runner, who authored Proposition 83 establishing Jessica's Law, has a bill involving Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites that she feared would add even more to agents' plates.
Not so, Runner said.
His bill, SB 1204 which has passed the Senate and the Public Safety committee in the Assembly, would simply require that sex offenders register their online and e-mail addresses as well as their instant messaging user names just like they do their physical addresses.
Silva argued that if it becomes a crime for a sex offender not to register their electronic info, that makes it absolutely incumbent on the agent to check the sites.
"Who enforces that if not us?" she asked. "It's ludicrous to say there's no extra work."
As for whether the GPS program has been a success, Runner said it's an evolving technology that should not be thought of as a cure-all.
"It's just one tool," he said.
There have been successes and failures with GPS, he acknowledged. But he firmly believes the technology and its use will continue to improve.
"That said, there have been problems with implementation." And he said he was "frustrated" with some of Corrections' responses to recommendations about how to do better.
"Whether that's a resource problem or a personnel problem I can't say," Runner added. "A person still has to decide to follow up on issues and Gardner is a perfect example. While he was on GPS he violated parole and someone could have put him back in prison but didn't."
The tip of the iceberg
Silva agreed GPS can be a good tool. But the program now isn't working as it should, she said.
"The Bakersfield situation is just the tip of the iceberg," she said.
I tried to speak with Rod Armstrong, the agent in charge of the Bakersfield office, about the supervision lapse here but he referred me to Corrections brass in Sacramento, saying he'd been told not to discuss the matter.
A range of Corrections press people told me that, yes, there had been "allegations" and "concerns" and a review had been completed.
They refused, however, to reveal the findings other than to say the lack of supervision wasn't because Armstrong had declined to authorize overtime to backfill for a vacationing agent, as had been alleged.
I wanted to know how Corrections planned to make sure such a gap in supervision didn't re-occur based on the findings of their review but was then told officials were "still looking into the matter," according to Terry Thornton, one of three Corrections spokespeople I talked with.
Moving forward
Corrections is responding to the Garrido/Gardner reports, said yet another spokesperson, Gordon Hinkle.
There's an internal audit to prioritize alerts and make sure they're being responded to and cleared.
And they've assembled a task force of law enforcement officials, victims rights groups, GPS experts and others to look over the recommendations from the Garrido/Gardner reports. How those recommendations may affect agent's workload will be a part of the review, Hinkle said.
"This isn't a home detention device," Hinkle reminded. "We're getting better with it all the time, but that doesn't mean GPS can prevent crimes from happening.
"The only way to keep monsters like Gardner and Garrido at bay is to keep them in prison."
Maybe, but we're not there yet.
Where we are is spending $60 million a year on a tool that it seems we're not using very well.
Trying to hide that fact won't fix the problem. ..Source.. The Bakersfield Californian
July 18, 2010
Sex offenders unwatched as parole struggles with GPS system
July 17, 2010
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is using GPS tracking to crack down on sex offenders at fairs and events statewide.
GPS Effective? It looks like GPS is a VERY costly failure. Last year 30 caught, five at state fairs, and no crimes committed nor did GPS prevent any. "last position..." which means it isn't real time, its delayed real time. Effective? 7,000/30 =.4% possible recidivists, and the cost of parole agents to monitor and answer MANY false alarms is? No wonder California is BROKE!7-17-2010 California:
As part of a sex offender’s parole agreement, there are certain places they can’t go. Places like the state fair, where there are lots of families with children.
To make sure that rule isn’t broken, seven-thousand California sex offenders have to wear gps ankle bracelets at all times. So for the next few months, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation parole officers are setting up laptops in their cars and monitoring more than a dozen events statewide.
“This is a screen and what it’s going to display is where this individual’s at.”
Parole Agent Lou Anne Fischer set up her computer at the state fair on opening day. Her screen shows a map with a little red arrow pointing to a sex offenders location, and where he’s headed. The idea is to get to them as quickly as possible.
“He’s going approximately 21 mph and that was his last position at 3:30 today.”
That particular offender was traveling in a car, passing by the fairgrounds. State parole administrator Marvin Speed says false alarms like that aren’t uncommon.
“You’re going to get some drifts, you’re going to get some false positives if you will, but that’s part of the process and you do have to track those down. We don’t want to ignore any alert or alarm because it may be real.”
Speed says once an offender enters the grounds, it can take up to 20 minutes to find them.
“If there’s a large crowd, sometimes it’s hard to find the individual but we know they’re still in the zone, we know they’re on fairgrounds, we know approximately where they are.”
Last year, 35 offenders were caught state wide. At the state fair alone, there were 30 notifications, and five arrests. In Sacramento, I’m Ida Lieszkovszky. ..Source.. by Capitol Public Radio
March 19, 2010
GPS monitoring of sex offenders is useful, but limited, experts say: 'It can't tell you what they're doing'
This is the best article on GPS and shows it CANNOT PREVENT crimes. Jessica's law author clearly sold the public a bill of good to get this passed, especially expecting local police departments to pay for, monitor offenders -no longer on supervision- using GPS units. Forgetting about the costs, that cannot be done when folks are no longer under state supervision; Runner never explained this beforehand.3-18-2010 California:
California voters in 2006 overwhelmingly approved Jessica's Law, which mandated that the state's sex offenders be monitored for life with a GPS unit.
With a GPS, or Global Positioning System, unit strapped to every sex offender's ankle, police would be able to look at a computer and see exactly where these potentially dangerous individuals were at all times.
But more than three years after the law's passage, only a fraction of the state's registered sex offenders wear a GPS unit, which uses satellites to pinpoint a person's location. In San Diego County, only those on parole and a handful of high-risk probationers have them.
John Albert Gardner III, the registered sex offender who is accused of killing 17-year-old Chelsea King and is a suspect in the death of 14-year-old Amber Dubois, wore a GPS ankle bracelet for the last year of his parole, from September 2007 to September 2008, California Department of Corrections records show.
He served five years in prison for a 2000 assault on a 13-year-old girl in Rancho Bernardo.
It's unknown how the GPS influenced his behavior during that period, or how it enhanced his supervision, though records show his parole agent warned him four times he was letting the unit's battery get too low.
Probation and parole officials say GPS is a useful tool, but it's not a guaranteed deterrent for sex offenders.
"GPS can tell you where someone has been and where they are, but it can't tell you what they're doing," California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Gordon Hinkle said.
Most experts agree a GPS device is best used as part of a larger treatment and tracking plan. Some worry that overemphasizing the role of the GPS unit creates a false public belief that a complex problem can be solved with a piece of technology.
"We're concerned about using GPS to the exclusion of everything else; we're concerned about saying, 'GPS is the answer,'" said Jack Wallace, a spokesman for the California Sex Offender Management Board, which advises the government and Legislature on sex offender policy.
How it's used
In San Diego County, all registered sex offenders who are on parole wear a GPS ankle bracelet. At last count in January, parole officers statewide supervised 6,988 parolees with GPS, Hinkle said.
The offenders are monitored at two levels, based on the risks they pose.
Parole agents monitor 2,192 of the offenders "actively," following a parolee's whereabouts in real time on a computer map several times throughout the day while also scrutinizing their tracks, Hinkle said.
Some 4,796 parolees deemed a lower risk are monitored "passively," with agents checking them by computer a couple of times a day, he said.
Each GPS unit costs about $1,500, or about $10.5 million for the state's nearly 7,000 units, and $6 a day after that, or about $15.3 million for annual monitoring cost, Hinkle said.
The GPS computer tracking software can be programmed with prohibited zones according to the terms of each offender's parole. Agents can receive alerts if a parolee enters a prohibited area, such as a victim's neighborhood. That kind of movement would cause a parole agent to call local police and immediately check on the sex offender, Hinkle said.
Each parole agent gets a daily report letting him know whether a parolee is keeping his GPS unit charged.
Letting a GPS unit go dead or removing it is a serious violation, which probably would prompt a parole revocation hearing, Hinkle said.
Gardner let unit run low
But letting a battery get low, as Gardner did four times, doesn't kill the GPS or prevent monitoring. That violation would usually prompt a warning, as it did in Gardner's case, Hinkle said.
Gardner's parole terms banned him from contact with people under 18. His GPS tracking would not show whether he was complying with that, or similar orders.
The San Diego County Probation Department supervises 484 people on probation for a sex crime, officials said. Of those, 15 deemed at high risk of reoffending violently are equipped with one of the department's 20 GPS units, which were purchased in 2005 through a grant, department spokesman Derryl Acosta said.
Soon, 20 more high-risk sex offenders will get GPS units through a federal stimulus grant, Chief Probation Officer Mack Jenkins said.
Jenkins said one of the benefits of GPS monitoring is it provides information about where sex offenders spend their days. With that knowledge, probation officers can conduct better interviews, test a probationer's truthfulness and make surprise visits.
"It's definitely a useful tool, but we keep it in the context of being just that," Jenkins said.
Lifetime monitoring unlikely
Jessica's Law author Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, told the state's Sex Offender Management Board in 2007 that the lifetime GPS monitoring provision was intended to apply to people paroled after the law passed, with local police taking over the responsibility for buying and monitoring the technology, according to a press release from Runner's office.
However, virtually no local police force in California monitors its registered sex offenders with GPS once they are released from parole, according to a January report from the California Sex Offender Management Board.
Wallace, the body's spokesman, said cost is one hurdle to local governments taking over the monitoring.
Also, he said, Jessica's Law does not provide any penalties for sex offenders who won't comply with the GPS requirement after they leave parole or probation.
"There's nothing in the law that says if I cut that GPS off and hand it back to you that there's a penalty attached, nothing that says there's a penalty for, say, not charging it," Wallace said.
Runner has said one of the main reasons for using GPS for sex offenders is the technology's deterrent effect. Because its use is relatively new, with California leading the country in the number of sex offenders monitored by GPS, reliable studies about its deterrent effects are few, Wallace said.
However, a few good studies indicate that sex offenders on GPS are indeed less likely to reoffend than those who aren't, he said.
Wallace noted that even if all known sex offenders were on GPS, unidentified and nonpredatory sex offenders would still find victims.
About 85 percent of sex crimes in the U.S. each year are committed by someone who is not a registered sex offender at the time, he said.
Because GPS monitoring is expensive, and most effective when used with other monitoring and treatment, the Sex Offender Management Board's recent report recommends it for some, but not all offenders, depending on their risk.
"What is going to provide the best community safety? Is it having some portion of your police force looking at tracks of a sex offender who maybe hasn't committed a sex offense for 30 years, or is it having those police on the streets?" Wallace said. ..Source.. SARAH GORDON
November 15, 2009
Tracking Homeless Sex Offenders (With GPS)
If registrants are homeless, is it likely they can pay for GPS? So, this expense would be totally borne by taxpayer money; not smart...
11-15-2009 Ohio:
DAYTON, Ohio — A Dayton area lawmaker wants Tier 3 homeless sex offenders to be tracked using either a GPS unit or a microchip.
State Rep. Clayton Luckie said his proposed bill is necessary after police arrested and charged a homeless sex offender for attacking two women near a hospital.
The bill is still in the early stages and had not yet been formally introduced.
"The public has safety awareness. They have the opportunity to know where predators are," said Luckie.
Tier 3 sex offenders are required to register with the sheriff's office every 90 days for life. Luckie said it's hard to keep track of them if they're homeless. That's why he believes his proposed bill will help keep women and children safe.
"The most important thing is to give the judges the discretion. Who needs to be monitored and who does not need to be monitored," said Luckie.
Luckie wants them to either wear a monitoring device or be micro-chipped.
"There's a little device that you can take a little needle and put the device right into a person's arm" he said.
"The bracelet idea is probably okay, but the microchip embedded in people, that's just not a good idea at all," said Sara Carlson, who is against the bill.
Carlson said it's just another example of too much government intrusion.
"His heart's in the right place, but I mean, it's our liberties that are at jeopardy here. Even the homeless sex offenders have some liberties," she said.
Carlson, who is unemployed, also isn't happy with the cost of the program. Luckie said it'll cost $40 a month to monitor homeless sex offenders.
"For the peace of mind of residents of the city of Dayton, I think we can apply for a grant or some federal funds to help us do this as a pilot project," said Luckie.
"Our tax dollars being spent. So certainly, there's better ways of keeping track. Maybe, oh I don't know, parole officers," said Carlson.
The proposed legislation is expected to be formally introduced to the House next week. ..Source.. by ONN TV.com
September 23, 2009
NM- The New Ball & Chain
9-23-2009 New Mexico:
New Mexico’s laws keep sex offenders under lock and signal
Bill Tennant’s Blackberry never stops buzzing.
It registers an alert 50 times a day. Each time, Tennant—or one of the other parole and probation officers under his command at the New Mexico Corrections Department’s response center in Albuquerque—logs on to a computer. There, they bring up a digital map of the state, which they use to track the 80 sex offenders currently under real-time electronic supervision.
The map is pink, the offenders are green blips and schools are red brick icons. During a recent demonstration, Tennant zooms in on a blip, which has flipped from green to red to indicate an offender has wandered outside his approved “inclusion” zone.
The blip, however, is barely outside the boundary of the shaded zone, so Tennant chalks it up as within the GPS device’s margin of error. Sometimes there’s a drift, he says. Before long, the offender is back in the green, making his way down the road.
GPS technology has made it easier to monitor sex offenders 24 hours a day, whereas before parole/probation officers relied solely on field visits and phone calls. Yet, the new system does have its shortcomings. Mainly, the GPS software can only tell a parole officer where the sex offender has been, not what he has been doing. The offender could be stopping at a liquor store (a parole violation) or meeting up socially with other sex offenders (another violation).
Tennant’s recommended method for digging down is to pick two offenders a day at random and follow their paths on the electronic map to deduce patterns in their behavior.
“You kind of have to use the Sherlock Holmes method to look at the data,” he says.
This active tracking kicked into high gear two years ago when the Legislature mandated that higher-level sex offenders be under active or real-time GPS monitoring for the duration of their paroles. As of 2003, parole for these offenders is a minimum of five years, a maximum of 20 years and, in 2007, lifetime parole was added for the worst offenders. The program will continue to expand and increase in cost: 147 sex offenders are due for release between now and next summer, according to a report by the New Mexico Sentencing Commission.
Those who work closely with sex offenders say electronic monitoring helps keep their clients in check, but so far is rife with technical glitches. The system is reassuring to some victims’ advocates, while others question whether the GPS monitoring really acts as a deterrent or, worse, spurs offenders to commit more heinous crimes.
Meanwhile, criminal defense attorneys and civil rights advocates—long critics of the public dissemination of sex-offender information—argue that electronic monitoring is another way in which the government is stripping these offenders of their civil rights and creating unconstitutional incarceration beyond their assigned sentences. Further, they point to federal research that indicates sex offenders are far less likely to reoffend than non-sex offenders.
And yet, as sex offenders become society’s scapegoats, these GPS devices may be the best protection these offenders have to prove alibis.
Ultimately, the debate over GPS tracking emphasizes the fundamental questions of how society deals with its most feared and unpredictable ex-convicts, and whether anything can prevent them from reoffending.
“When my clients complain about it, they’ll say, ‘This GPS won’t stop me from doing anything,’” Dr. Ernesto Santistevan, who counsels sex offenders one-on-one in Santa Fe and Albuquerque through a state contract, says. “What GPS does is let them know they’re probably going to get caught.”
In orbit 13,000 miles above earth, 24 US military satellites with atomic-clock hearts cycle the earth twice a day. They’re monitored and adjusted from ground stations across the planet. These two components, along with the commercial devices available in any tech store, make up the Global Positioning System—a public utility owned by the US government.
A GPS device finds its position in space—latitude, longitude, altitude—by locating four satellites in orbit. It calculates the distance between the quartet to triangulate a point.
GPS was used exclusively by the US military until 1983. That fall, Korean Air Lines Flight 007—New York to Seoul, via Anchorage—drifted into Soviet airspace. It was shot down, killing 269 passengers and the flight crew. In response, President Ronald Reagan ordered the GPS open to civilian use, with the hopes that the technology could prevent future catastrophes.
Twenty-four years later, the planet’s dependence on the system means that GPS failure would be a global security emergency, not only for air traffic, but for tracking and targeting missiles and monitoring conflict zones.
In New Mexico, it would mean 80 sex offenders under state supervision would be freed from their electronic balls and chains.
Most of the GPS units placed on sex offenders come in two parts: a light-weight ankle bracelet and a five-pound box that can be worn around the waist or over the shoulder with a strap. An offender must have both devices with him at all times.
The ankle bracelet serves only as an electronic tether to ensure the inmate is always within a few feet of the primary GPS unit. That box triangulates its position and then sends that information through regular cellular signals to the monitoring station. This transmission is where many of the glitches originate.
The devices can transmit an infraction message within 15 seconds. Common violations include “Bracelet Gone” and “Strap Tamper,” but the device also alerts law enforcement if there’s a curfew violation, if the offender has strayed outside his imposed “inclusion zone” or wandered into the “exclusion zone,” which could be a school, a park or a victim’s neighborhood.
While these violations often prove real, they are also frequently false. Santistevan says he’s watched the device register a “device gone” alert while an offender sat across from him in his office. Snowstorms also interfere with the signal and Santistevan has had to continue
the session in the parking lot while his client tries to reestablish connection.
“Usually, [the alert] will clear, but we’re still standing out there in the snow for 30 minutes,” Santistevan says.
According to Terry Baker, the parole and probation officer who exclusively handles sex offenders in Santa Fe, cloud cover can interrupt the signals and there are several dead zones in Lamy. Sometimes the satellites themselves are glitchy.
“If a guy is at work at a warehouse, sometimes the GPS will show him 1,000 yards away one minute, and the next minute he’ll be back at work,” Baker says. “You know he can’t cover 1,000 yards in a minute.”
This, he says, makes filtering the true violations from the false ones difficult. But that’s to be expected with a first-generation device.
“We’ve got newer models coming down the pipe that I hope will iron out some of these false positives,” Baker says. The new devices are one-piece GPS ankle bracelets, and he is already testing one with a parolee.
Right now the state holds an $87,000 contract with Florida-based Pro Tech Monitoring, which provides the devices and software, and maintains an archive of all offender data. The state rents the individual units at a rate of $8.45 per offender per day, the equivalent of more than $3,000 per offender per year.
The offender pays only a fraction of that: $50 per month, but if the device is damaged, lost or thrown away, he is liable for the full cost: $1,500.
That’s too much for most offenders, Tennant says.
“If they’re going to run, they’ll often drop the GPS off [at night],” he says. “We’re not open then, but they just drop it outside the front door.”
At first, J hated the GPS.
The sex offender was convicted of five second-degree counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor in February. Under his plea deal, he was released with five years of parole to serve on real-time electronic monitoring.
“At first, I thought it was impossible to have this thing, but I got used to it,” J, who spoke with SFR on condition of anonymity, says. “If I know where I can go, where I’m not supposed to, that makes it a lot easier to go by the rules and regulations.”
A few weeks back, for example, he left the GPS box in his girlfriend’s car while he went to work wearing his ankle bracelet. His girlfriend then drove the car, with the device inside, to her grandmother’s work, a day care—which registered an alert on the system.
J spent a few days in jail and is now complying with the system.
“This is freedom,” J says. “Even though I have this GPS and ankle bracelet, it doesn’t bother me anymore. As long as I stay in the Santa Fe city limits and as long as I’m not where I’m not supposed to be at, I’m OK. I always think about that: As long as I’m not in the restricted area, I’m doing fine.”
J speaks glowingly of the counselors and parole officers who are charged with his supervision and care. That’s unusual, Baker says, compared to the complaints his clients testify about during parole violation hearings in court.
“We don’t harass them, but we do remind them they need to be extremely vigilant about where they are and who they’re with,” Baker, whose caseload can reach up to 25 sex offenders, says. “GPS is one the best ways to keep them in check. Honestly, I want to say it’s the GPS and the fact they’re under supervision that they aren’t [reoffending].”
While Baker is often the object of sex offenders’ frustration, many of their complaints are directed at the entire supervision system.
The GPS supervision is just one of many restrictions that frustrate sex offenders, Santistevan says. There are also the limitations on where they can live, where they can work and what events they can attend, as well as disclosures they must make, drug tests, field visits both at home and work, and the stigma they’ll suffer for the rest of their lives.
“They feel it’s very punitive,” Santistevan says. “They say, ‘I could’ve killed somebody and I wouldn’t have this level of supervision.’ Honestly, that’s kind of true.”
Understanding why a client committed the sex offense is part of his job, Santistevan says, but it’s a challenge, he says, mentioning that he has a 6-year-old niece.
“You have to hear these stories in excruciating detail and it’s a balance that you have to maintain,” he says. “You can’t be the bleeding heart and you can’t be the hammer of justice.”
But it’s important to help offenders accept the realities of their situations and why the community may never trust them.
“I explain that they scare society very badly,” Santistevan says. “If my house is being repossessed, I’m defaulting on my mortgage and I go rob a bank, nobody’s saying it’s OK to rob banks, but people kind of understand. You go commit a sex crime, it scares everybody to death because nobody understands that.”
Baker and Santistevan agree that the ones to worry about are those who don’t accept and feel remorse for their crimes. J would fit into this category; he maintains his innocence, claiming the charges were part of a scheme by his ex-wife. Otherwise, he has come to terms with his sentence.
Santistevan says that sex offenders are such a heterogeneous population—in their history, motives and will power—that compliance with electronic monitoring and progress in counseling sessions doesn’t guarantee an offender won’t cut his strap and go underground.
Of the thousands listed on the New Mexico Department of Public Safety’s Sex Offender Registry, 43 sex offenders are classified currently as absconders. Few were on active GPS.
“You never see it coming,” Santistevan says. “I’ve had clients who have been in stable jobs, stable living situations with family members—and they run.”
On Sept. 12, Judith “Judge Judy” Sheindlin appeared on Larry King Live to discuss—in her words “kvetch”—about the recent case of a registered sex offender who allegedly kept a girl locked in a secret cellar in California for 18 years.
“The only way to rehab cure a pedophile is to kill him,” Sheindlin told King. “There is no other cure…Unless you want to put him somewhere in the Sahara and make sure that they can’t get away.”
Sheindlin argued that building new prisons ought to be part of the stimulus package.
Local victims’ advocates say they support Sheindlin’s view, despite the Draconian attitude.
“Personally, philosophically, I agree with her,” Santa Fe Rape Crisis & Trauma Treatment Center Executive Director Diane McWilliams tells SFR. “We’re not safe from them. I would actually agree because we know their behavior is unpredictable, and we don’t know if they will offend again. But, on the other hand, where do we stop as a society?”
Public safety advocates have floated ideas from lifetime incarceration to chemical castration—McWilliams is certainly interested in medical breakthroughs that may be able to control certain sexual impulses. But, as a former legislator in Delaware, McWilliams notes there’s a thin line between tough-on-crime political posturing and genuine concern for public safety.
“If we’re requiring them to report every hour and they can’t get a job and they have no credit, we’re basically encouraging them to go underground,” McWilliams says. “That’s just horrific…I think the answer is to know where they are and give them some ability to function.”
Patti March, the founder of New Mexico Survivors of Homicide, worries layering restrictions upon sex offenders might exacerbate their impulses.
“It just seems logical that if somebody thinks they’re going to be tracked for the rest of their life, they might just think, ‘I better kill this person so I don’t get caught,’” March says.
In the late 1990s, March was part of the first grassroots effort in New Mexico to release information regarding sex offenders. Initially, the group collected data from the Corrections Department about murderers and sex offenders who were coming up for parole. Eventually, the program became obsolete as the Corrections Department instituted an online database of inmates and the Department of Public Safety launched its online Sex Offender Registry.
Karen Herman, director of the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs’ sexual assault service, says GPS tracking is an important tool for law enforcement, but questions the need to put the offenders’ personal details, such as where they live and work, on the internet.
“We do know some surveillance coupled with treatment works to help some offenders from reoffending, but posting their address on a website is probably not the most effective way,” she says.
Overall, Herman believes GPS monitoring may provide a false sense of security.
“To the public, it’s the stranger that we have to be aware of and that stranger needs to be tracked because they could commit an assault,” Herman says. But “often the offender is someone known to the victim and they have a range of ways they can gain access to that victim.”
March also wonders if focusing only on sexual offenses distracts from greater problems in the criminal justice system. Like Santistevan’s clients, March asks why sex offenders receive much higher supervision than those who commit other violent crimes, such as murder.
“My son was murdered in 1995 and, to this day, I wish my son had only been molested,” March says. “He could have been molested 10 times, but he would be here and he could work on that issue.”
Albuquerque-based attorney Kari Morrissey has a near-perfect record when it comes to defending clients accused of sexual offenses.
Not a single one of her clients is under sex-offender supervision, she says; she either successfully negotiates plea deals in which her client pleads to a lesser violent crime, without the sexual enhancement, or she takes it to trial and wins acquittals.
Hypothetically speaking, if one of Morrissey’s clients were convicted of a sex crime under the new five-to-20-year parole laws, she says, on appeal, it is “very likely” the courts would rule these laws to be unconstitutional. In particular, she says the law isn’t clear on whether the state’s Corrections Department has the authority to reincarcerate an offender who has finished his prison sentence but violated the terms of the extended parole.
“These laws are too new to have the circumstances challenged and really closely looked at by our higher courts,” Morrissey says. “These were passed by the Legislature and they don’t have the stamp of support of the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeals.”
Although Morrissey sits on the opposite side of the courtroom as victims’ advocates, philosophically she shares a lot in common with them, particularly when it comes to public understanding of the underlying issues.
“For most people who are on some type of supervision, the offense took place between them and a family member, so how is GPS monitoring going to make a difference?” Morrissey says. “The community at large has the perception that these sex offenders are running around and hanging out at elementary schools and stalking strangers, and that’s just not true.”
Morrissey echoes March’s concern that GPS tracking may be more effective in controlling ex-convicts who aren’t guilty of sex offenses.
“If you want to cut down on crime, you should outfit offenders guilty of other crimes,” Morrissey says. “With breaking into cars and houses, [GPS tracking] would actually be effective.”
US Bureau of Justice Statistics research supports Morrissey’s case. An oft-cited 10-year study released in 2004 found that only 43 percent of sex offenders were rearrested within three years of their release, compared to 68 percent for non-sex offenders. Of the sex offenders, only 5.3 percent were rearrested for another sex crime.
Melissa Hill, a criminal appeals attorney who represents the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico on the Sentencing Commission’s Sex Offender Management Board, is advocating legislative changes to the law to allow for risk assessment of each offender to determine which ones would best be served by active electronic monitoring.
“Until we shift our policies…we’re going to be watching a lot of people we don’t need to watch and not spending enough time watching the people we need to watch,” Hill says.
Ultimately, Hill says the parole board should be allowed to make case-by-case decisions as to which offenders should be tracked with active GPS versus passive GPS. With passive monitoring, the devices still collect the GPS data, but the offenders must make regular visits to their parole officers, who can then download the information.
Broader passive GPS tracking would also cut down on what First Judicial District Judge Michael Vigil, who chairs the Sex Offender Management Board, describes as a “quite expensive” program. The cost to actively monitor a sex offender for the minimum five years of parole is more than $15,000; passive GPS costs half as much and the savings could be redirected toward more treatment or more parole officers.
This switch also would address a disparity emerging between urban and rural offenders.
“Sex offenders are ending up spending their parole in prison because they come from a part of the state where there isn’t the technology to provide real-time monitoring,” Hill says. “It actually prevents parole completely because the state isn’t able to comply with [the law].”
“Sometimes there is less availability of cell phone reception [on the pueblos and reservations],” Frank says. “I can’t say whether it happens disproportionately, but it does happen on occasion.”
Hill doubts many of these ideas will make it to the Legislature. The Sex Offender Management Board has sent many of these recommendations to the Sentencing Commission, which has in turn bounced them back to the board.
“We can make recommendations until we’re blue in the case, but if the Sentencing Commission doesn’t have to adopt our recommendations, then the Legislature doesn’t have to enact any laws to comply with the policies we recommend,” Hill says. “The board might be useful, but it’s toothless.”
While GPS can’t show a parole officer what an offender is doing, it can prove what he hasn’t done.
It’s generally true, Baker says, that when a violent or sexual crime occurs, sex offenders living in the surrounding neighborhoods are often the first suspects. GPS provides strong alibis.
In a recent murder case in which a Nambé woman was accused of stabbing her mother to death, the defense attempted to pin the crime on her ex-boyfriend, Joseph Herrera, a registered sex offender convicted in 1999 of third-degree criminal sexual conduct of a minor.
Herrera’s GPS logs exonerated him.
“When it happened, we got a call advising us what was going on, so we just ran the tracking,” Baker says. “He was at his house at the time it happened and that was pretty much black and white.”
The GPS also can protect sex offenders from accusations made by vengeful ex-relations.
“I have had clients whose disgruntled girlfriends have accused them of crimes, battery, violating parole and Terry Baker can look it up see that [the client] wasn’t even there,” Santistevan says. “That doesn’t make my guys appreciate their GPS much, though.”
Advocates for sex offender rights concede the monitoring system has its benefits. Alice Benson, a co-director of Citizens for Change New Mexico, which acts as an advocacy and support group for sex offenders, recalls an incident with an offender she hires to chop wood in her backyard.
Due to his GPS device, his parole officer caught him drinking at a party. He went back to prison for a few months and hasn’t violated his parole since.
“I think he learned his lesson,” Benson says. “So, that was one advantage.”
Eighteen years after 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped in northern California, parole officers discovered she was with Phillip Garrido, a registered sex offender. El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies arrested Garrido and soon information emerged that despite twice-monthly home visits, parole officers failed to discover the backyard shed where Dugard was kept.
Would modern technology have helped free Dugard earlier?
The quick answer is: probably. Parole officers could have looked up every sex offender’s whereabouts that summer day in 1991 to identify which one had passed by Dugard’s school bus stop where she was snatched. Failing that, they could have hauled in every offender whose GPS monitor was out of service.
At New Mexico’s parole response center, Tennant dreams about real-time satellite imaging, which would allow him to zoom in and see not only where the offender is, but who he’s with and what he’s doing—yet another way of stopping a Dugard scenario.
Tennant also looks forward to the day that the state Corrections Department can implant offenders with sub-dermal GPS devices. The devices would monitor whether an offender has drugs or alcohol in his blood stream and would cut down on tampering.
“Offenders would have to dig it out with a knife,” he says.
It sounds very Big Brother.
Tennant leans forward in his desk chair and says, “And that’s the way we like it.” ..Source.. by Dave Maass
September 5, 2009
GA- Keeping a close watch on sexual predators
9-5-2009 Georgia:
No free man is as closely watched by Hall County authorities as Michael Eugene Cromer.
Sheriff’s officials know where he goes during the day and where he lays his head at night. If his movements draw suspicion, he may get a visit from a detective.
Cromer, 43, is one of a handful of people living in Hall County who are considered sexually violent predators, a classification that goes beyond the county’s other 230 registered sex offenders.
As sex offenders draw renewed attention following a highly publicized California kidnapping case, more of Georgia’s convicted felons released into the public are being classified as high-risk. In 2005, there were just seven sexually violent predators living in Georgia among the state’s thousands of registered sex offenders. With the passage of a 2006 law that expanded the classification process, there are now more than 100 predators living in the state, including three in Hall County.
Two local predators, Larry Gordon Dalton and Jason Todd Smith, are monitored by the state probation department. Cromer, who served more than seven years in Pennsylvania prisons for involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and indecent assault on a child, is monitored by the sheriff’s office.
Compared to the other sex offenders the sheriff’s office keeps up with, Cromer gets special attention. He wears a waterproof electronic monitoring ankle bracelet that sends out a signal pinpointing his location at all times. He will wear the bracelet or one like it for the rest of his life.
Each morning, Hall County Sheriff’s Investigator Mike Mazarky brings up a satellite photo map of Hall County on his computer screen with red dots that show him where Cromer’s been.
Homeless, Cromer usually sleeps in a wooded area off McConnell Drive. He walks to local shelters for food and keeps a fairly regular routine, Mazarky said.
If Cromer ventured somewhere he shouldn’t be, such as a school playground, and lingered there, Mazarky would know.
"I’d go have a little talk with him," the investigator said.
Under Georgia law, sexually violent predators are people convicted of sex crimes who were deemed to be at risk of committing another dangerous sexual offense after their release from prison.
Since 2006, 12 members of a sexual offender registry review board appointed by the governor hold monthly regional meetings in five separate regions and meet quarterly as a full board. The board members, several of whom are licensed clinicians, review more than 200 sex offender cases each month using a set of risk-assessment guidelines known as Static 2002 to assist in their decisions. The evaluations may take into account an offender’s criminal record, history of violence, drug or alcohol abuse, and other factors like lack of self-control.
Cromer was designated a predator by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, where he was a prisoner until 2005. When he moved to Georgia, he was required to register with local authorities within 72 hours.
Because he is homeless, Cromer is asked to check in at the sheriff’s office once a week. Mazarky may conduct periodic spot checks as well. With the ankle monitor, he knows where to find him. Cromer has been cooperative and does everything asked of him, Mazarky said.
Dalton, who served seven years for a Jackson County child molestation conviction, is monitored by the state probation office in much the same way. He wears an ankle monitor and his movements are reviewed daily by a probation officer. His probation officer has at least four contacts with him a month, including a check of his residence. Smith, who was convicted of statutory rape, has the same conditions.
Ahmed Holt, manager of the Georgia Department of Corrections’ Sex Offender Administration Unit, said no probationers in the state get more individual attention than those deemed predators.
"Without a doubt, when they’re declared predators, we automatically bump them up to our highest level of supervision," Holt said.
The electronic Global Positioning System used by state officials has areas where children gather mapped out in each county. If a predator spends too much time in those locations, an alert will be sent to his probation officer.
"It sends out a hit immediately if they go into a violation area," Holt said.Officials acknowledge that while it is illegal for sex offenders to live within 1,000 feet of a location where children congregate, it’s not against the law for them to sit at a park bench or go to a public pool.
However, "you can’t loiter at a park," Holt said. "You have to be there for a specific purpose."
Holt said the change in state law led to the rapid growth in sexual predator classifications. Prior to 2006, a judge or probation officer had to request a review of a sex offender’s status.
"Now everybody is reviewed," Holt said.
With more predators come the demand for more resources to monitor them. Already the sheriff’s office has a full-time investigator solely dedicated to keeping up with sex offenders living in the county.
While sexually violent predators are deemed high-risk, they are not certain to re-offend. Neither Holt or Mazarky are aware of any sexual predators being charged with committing new sexual offenses.
Holt cautions that his office keeps tabs on predators "only to the extent that technology allows it."
"We don’t have an eye in the sky on them, but it is another tool to monitor their whereabouts at all times." ..Source.. by Stephen Gurr
March 26, 2009
CA- Confusing sex-offender mandate stalled in its tracks
3-26-2009 California:
SAN FRANCISCO – A California law requiring a lifetime of GPS monitoring for sex offenders has turned into a logistical and budget nightmare for San Mateo County — and virtually every other jurisdiction in the state.
Named for a Florida girl raped and killed by a convicted sex offender, Jessica’s Law was passed by 70 percent of California voters in 2006. The law, also known as Proposition 83, imposes stiffer penalties for sex offenders and makes possessing child pornography a felony.
But it’s the legislation’s mandate of Global Positioning System tracking and the prohibition of any offender living 2,000 feet from a park or school that has local jurisdictions scrambling for answers.
In January, the Governor’s Office announced it was outfitting all paroled sex offenders with a GPS bracelet that can track their
movements.
But state officials concede that the tracking is mostly passive — that is, nobody sits in front of a monitor watching offenders’ movement. If they are suspected of a crime, however, the GPS records could help in court.
“Having a GPS device on every sex-offender parolee in California is an important public-safety tool that will hold these individuals accountable for their actions and whereabouts,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said.
Once terms of parole are finished, however, the continued monitoring and living requirements are the responsibility of local jurisdictions, according to lawmakers. The state offers no equipment, funding or other resources.
“[The voters] made it clear they want this population tracked and supervised in a certain way. That doesn’t mean all the answers are easy,” said Gordon Hinkle, spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
There are currently 797 registered sex offenders on the Peninsula, according to Sgt. Brian Raffaelli of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.
Jessica’s Law applies to those who have committed crimes since 2006, so the number of offenders who will need the equipment and monitoring is expected to grow each year as they are released from parole.
“In theory, the law was great. But in reality, since it was unfunded, it leaves a big void between what they expect us to do and what we can actually do,” Raffaelli said.
The state spends about $1,500 to set up the system for each parolee and about $6 a day per offender in monitoring costs, Hinkle said. How much counties and cities will need to spend is unknown.
Adding to the confusion is a lack of laws directing local jurisdictions on how to handle violations, and guidance on who’s responsible for the offenders: The county where they committed the crime or their county of residence.
The law’s requirement that offenders cannot live within 2,000 feet of a school or park is also causing concern on the local level — something Raffaelli calls a “logistical nightmare.”
The state previously had more modest residency requirements: high-risk sex offenders on parole were required to stay 2,640 feet away from anywhere children gather. Jessica’s Law expanded the limits on those convicted of any sex crime, from distribution of obscene material to rape of a child, which reduced locations they could reside.
“We’re always scrambling to find a place to put these guys away from schools and parks. Once they’re off parole and probations, we can’t enforce that,” Raffaelli said.
The state’s Sex Offender Management Board — a 17-member panel created by the governor in 2006 — called for the repeal of residency requirements after reporting that the number of homeless sex offenders has “greatly risen” as a result.
In November, that board released a report called “Homelessness Among Sex Offenders in California.” It found that the number of sex offenders registering as transient had increased from 2,050 in June 2007 to 3,267 in August 2008, an increase of 60 percent.
Among parolees — who represent about 15 percent of all registered sex offenders and are the only population being actively monitored — the increase in homelessness rose more than 800 percent. In November 2006, before the passage of Jessica’s Law, 88 parolee sex offenders declared themselves transient. By June 29, 2008, that number had increased to 1,056.
“It can be no coincidence that the rise in homelessness among registered sex offenders corresponds with recent changes regarding residency restrictions among all registered sex offenders,” the Sex Offender Management Board report said. “Common sense leads to the conclusion that a community cannot be safer when sex offenders are homeless. In this case, the empirical evidence supports common sense.”
Board member Tom Tobin, a psychologist who treats sex offenders, said the law mandates that local jurisdictions should implement the program “if they can,” but offers no help. Only one city in the state — Fresno — has declared its intent to implement the law, he said.
However, Fresno’s plan hit a snag in mid-January after legal concerns were raised about city officials’ plan to use seized money from drug dealers to fund the ankle bracelets. Not only was the measure ill conceived, but there is no evidence it will make citizens safer, Tobin said.
“It seems to make sense — it’s very appealing — but there’s really no researched evidence,” he said. “There are just a lot of unanswered questions indicating this was not thought through.”
Investigation of sex crimes falls behind
In San Mateo County, economic belt-tightening has squeezed sex-crime detectives out of the Sheriff’s Office.
The office still responds to rapes, sexual assaults and child molestations, but investigating is done primarily by those working on property crimes.
The county’s sexual-assault unit disbanded April 8, 2007, with its lone full-time detective and three part-timers re-assigned to other departments. Since then, sex crimes have jumped from about 300 a year to around 400, said sheriff’s Sgt. Brian Raffaelli.
In addition to investigating all sexual assaults, the unit ran stings targeting offenders who used the Internet to prey on children.
“We spent years and years in training and actually doing the cases, and have a lot of expertise,” Raffaelli said. “And through no fault of our own, it’s kind of being wasted.”
Raffaelli chalked it up to tough economic times, but pointed out that sex-crime units are generally viewed as more expendable.
“Even when money is right, despite what people think, the sex-crimes part of law enforcement is not given the priority of narcotics and gangs,” he said. “It seems they have task forces for everything else.”
By the numbers
Number of sex offenders in San Francisco
1,025
Number of sex offenders in San Mateo County
797
Number of parolee sex offenders in California monitored with GPS by the state
6,110 ..News Source.. by Tamara Barak Aparton, Examiner Staff Writer
March 1, 2009
WI- Republicans blast proposed changes to sex offender monitoring
Read this carefully to see all of the Republican complaints, then ask, where is their suggestion to resolve the issue? It appears all they want to do is complain, actually, and you won't hear this from me often, the Gov. reasoning (THIS TIME) to save money is sound! There is no proof that active monitoring makes the public more safe than passive monitoring, for those who have been on GPS for years already.
3-1-2009 Wisconsin:
Weeks before the 2006 election in which he sought a second term, Gov. Jim Doyle touted his willingness to punish sex offenders, including signing a law requiring real-time electronic monitoring of some of the worst sex offenders for life.
"This expanded GPS will help law enforcement know exactly where these people are every minute of every day," Doyle said in statement at the time. "And if they go someplace where they put kids in danger and violate their probation, we’ll know immediately and we’ll put them back behind bars."
Now, the Democratic governor wants to give the Department of Corrections the ability to lift the minute-by-minute, post-prison monitoring of some sex offenders in the program, known as "active" tracking, and electronically watch them less intensely, called "passive" tracking.
The proposal, which Doyle included in his 2009-11 budget plan, has prompted outrage from Republicans, who said it would make the public less safe.
"What the governor is doing is gutting the toughest sex predator program in the country," said Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, who authored the tracking law. "These are the worst of the worst of child sex predators, and he is basically letting them go on the streets of Wisconsin to save a few bucks."
Rick Raemisch, Corrections secretary, said the move would make the program more efficient by focusing tracking resources on the worst offenders.
"If a person behaves themselves, is a model citizen, has changed, has accepted treatment, has followed treatment, treatment’s successful and … he’s in the 18th year of supervision, it just makes sense to be more efficient" by using passive monitoring, he said.
Corrections officials say it’s unclear how many of the 748 sex offenders projected to be under lifetime GPS monitoring by the end of the 2009-11 biennium would be passively tracked if the proposal is adopted. No estimates were developed when the proposal was prepared, said Ismael Ozanne, executive assistant at Corrections.
It’s also not clear how much money the Department of Corrections might save.
But John Dipko, a prison system spokesman, said it costs state taxpayers about $8 per offender per day to monitor each sex offender in real time versus $4 per offender under passive monitoring.
Doyle’s budget calls for spending $8.3 million on the tracking program in 2009-11; Corrections requested $10.3 million.
Active vs. passive
The sex-offender tracking law required the state to electronically monitor the worst sex offenders in real time starting in January 2008.
Among those tracked after they are released from prison are people who raped a child under age 12, those convicted of multiple sex offenses and mentally impaired sex offenders who are no longer in state custody.
Currently, 157 offenders are on electronic monitoring, all but 11 actively, Ozanne said.
Those on "active" monitoring are required to carry a portable tracking device, and their locations are transmitted to computers at the state monitoring center, Dipko said.
Each offender must avoid certain locations, such as schools, day care centers or the neighborhoods of victims of sex crimes. If they violate those restrictions, the center is immediately alerted and workers notify local and national law enforcement, Dipko said.
Offenders on passive monitoring must also carry a portable tracking device. But the record of their movements is downloaded to state computers only when offenders recharge their tracking devices, which occurs at least once within 24 hours, Ozanne said.
If an offender on passive monitoring enters an area that is off limits, the state is only alerted when the record is downloaded, not when the transgression occurs, he said. Monitors then notify authorities, Ozanne said. Authorities are also contacted if an offender fails to recharge a battery according to a pre-arranged schedule, he said.
If there has been no transgression by an offender on "passive" monitoring, tracking officials still review the record the day it comes in, he said.
Offenders won’t run ‘wild’
Republicans say passive monitoring makes it more likely that sex offenders will commit other crimes.
"The most important part of GPS tracking is these child predators know they’re being watched every minute of every day," said Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc. "That is what keeps recidivism rates down."
Raemisch called the way GOP lawmakers have characterized Doyle and his proposal "insulting." Doyle, he said, has a long track record of cracking down on sex offenders, including forcing delinquent offenders to comply with the state’s sex offender registry.
The state plans to continue real-time monitoring of the most serious sex offenders, Raemisch said. Doyle’s plan allows corrections experts in sex offenses discretion to determine who is a threat to a community.
"This isn’t going to be something where suddenly there’s going to be sex offenders running wild because the Department of Corrections isn’t going to monitor them," he said. "That’s as far from the truth as anything. It’s the opposite. We believe we can handle our GPS units more efficiently if the law will allow it."
Ozanne also said new technology is being developed so that passive tracking could allow for immediate alerts to the monitoring center if an offender enters a forbidden location.
Legislature’s reaction?
It’s unclear what kind of reception Doyle’s proposal will get from the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, hasn’t reviewed it, a spokeswoman said last week. A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville, had no immediate comment Friday.
Suder said he will try to persuade his Democratic colleagues not to adopt Doyle’s proposal. "I think the public is going to be outraged, and with public support we’re going to change this," Suder said. ..News Source.. by MARK PITSCH
February 19, 2009
WI- Less Restrictions for Offenders?
2-19-2009 Wisconsin:
Governor Doyle's recent budget proposal changes a sex offender monitoring program that he signed into law in 2005. The proposal no longer makes GPS tracking for certain more dangerous and high risk sex offenders mandatory after they've been out of prison and on parole for one year. It gives the Department of Correction discretion to move offenders from active "GPS" tracking to passive tracking after they've completed 12 months of parole. Previously, the bill only gave the DOC discretion only after the offender completed his or her entire sentence. Passive tracking means the DOC still tracks the offenders but they get the information a little bit later at less than half the cost of GPS tracking. "I would much rather have a system where we know where the heck these people are 24 hours a day, we are tracking them, they have every chance to lie under a passive system," said Wisconsin State Representative Scott Suder.
The Department of Corrections says this will allow the Department to maximize GPS tracking for those where the greatest need exists.
Rep. Scott Suder is one of three Republican opponents taking aim at the Governor's treatment of the sex offender management programs .
"Let's be clear, with these changes Governor Doyle is gutting the toughest sex offender tracking program in the nation," Suder said. "Not only is he cutting the funding by nearly $2 million, he's taking away the real-time 24 hour tracking requirements that mean we won't know if a sex predator visits a playground or goes near a school until after it happens."
The Governor's press office referred questions to the Department of Corrections. John Dipko from the DOC says the Governor's proposal fully funds the GPS tracking program, and that the Department of Corrections initial estimates for their budget, overestimated the costs. "I want to make this clear," said Dipko about the proposal, "A dangerous sex offender will not be taking off of it (GPS) if they pose a risk that makes active tracking appropriate." ..News Source.. by WGBA.com
January 7, 2009
CA- Swearengin jumps right in to Fresno mayoral job
The mayor's comments as to sex offenders are laughable. Notice she intends to monitor those offenders who are no longer on parole or probation which the law does say. Whats wrong with that you say, well what will the monitor do when the registrant takes a trip to Europe, South America, etc. They are OFF supervision and can go where they want and when they want. Absent a new crime they cannot be placed back on supervision. What a waste of public resources and funds, yes funds that were recouped from drug offenders, but that will not cover the costs mark my words. Shortsighted lawmakers only look to what sounds good.
1-7-2009 California:
Minutes after she was sworn in as the 24th mayor of Fresno on Tuesday morning, Ashley Swearengin stepped to a podium and began outlining her plans for the next 100 days.
"If I seem impatient this morning, it's because I am. I'm chomping at the bit to get to work," Swearengin said.
Swearengin was sworn in at 9:35 a.m., with her husband, Paul, and their two children watching.
She thanked her family and supporters for their help, and then jumped into her goals for the coming months, including a citywide efficiency analysis to make sure residents get the most for their tax dollars, an internal analysis of every city department to find unneeded programs, and a redesign of the permitting process to make it more transparent and accountable.
"The dollars we spend are not ours; they belong to the public, and we will keep a close eye on each one. We've got to be extremely focused on the work that will produce the best results for the community," Swearengin said.
She didn't wait long to introduce her first initiative. An hour after she was sworn in, she and Police Chief Jerry Dyer announced a plan to increase local monitoring of sex offenders.
Swearengin was one of the last to speak at Tuesday's meeting, which began with the swearing-in of Andreas Borgeas and Lee Brand to the City Council.
Both thanked their supporters and outgoing Mayor Alan Autry for his leadership over the past eight years. There were also several light moments.
Borgeas, who takes over the District 2 seat from Brian Calhoun, returned to his seat in the audience after being sworn in, then laughed as he was called to the dais by outgoing Council President Blong Xiong.
"You need to get used to sitting up here," Xiong said.
Borgeas, 34, became emotional while thanking his friends and family, and particularly his wife, Anna.
Brand, who took over the District 6 seat from his good friend Jerry Duncan, said he looked forward to working with the rest of the council.
"No matter how good our ideas are, we cannot succeed without the support of our colleagues and the mayor. My prayer for us all is that God will grant us the wisdom to make the right decisions in these difficult times," Brand said.
Throughout the meeting, Autry was the first out of his seat to applaud as the new council members and Swearengin were sworn in.
Earlier in the meeting, in his last remarks as mayor, Autry encouraged all of the new officials to keep open minds as they began their public service careers.
"Expect the unexpected, but remember that mayors come and mayors go. You don't own the offices you were elected to, you are simply stewards," Autry said.
Swearengin's sex-offender monitoring program is scheduled to go before the City Council next week.
The program would use money seized from drug dealers to fund monitoring of sex offenders who have completed their state parole.
Currently, the more than 70 registered sex offenders living in Fresno are not monitored after they complete state parole, even though the law allows lifelong electronic monitoring, Dyer said.
Dyer said the program would cost about $50,000 this year, and would use police cadets to track movements of sex offenders by satellite-monitored ankle bracelets.
Dyer said the monitoring would stop on any sex offender who moved out of Fresno.
"It may provide incentive for some of these individuals to leave," Dyer said. ..News Source.. by Denny Boyles / The Fresno Bee
December 17, 2008
WI- Corrections Dept. wants offenders to help pay for GPS
If I understand this type of GPS Tracking system, -see my highlight-, it only works IF the offender TURNS IT ON? Read what the article says, am I going nuts, what state official would approve such a STUPID system. This system must be lining the pockets of someone..
12-17-2008 Wisconsin:
The state Corrections Department wants to make sex offenders help pay for the GPS tracking devices they're supposed to wear.
About 145 of the most serious offenders are being tracked now
The corrections' agency is seeking an emergency rule to charge the offenders $4 to $8 a day, which amounts to a maximum of $240 a month.
Only two people spoke about the fee at a recent hearing in Madison.
Sex offender Grover Maass says there's no way he can afford it because when employers learn about the bracelet they generally refuse to hire him.
And even if they did, Maass said he'd have to go outside every half-hour to send his GPS signal, something few employers would tolerate.
But Madison attorney and former legislator Peter Bear says he hopes GPS bracelets can be cost-effective for non-violent non-sex offenders to wear after an early release from prison.
He says it would help those people become productive members of society, at a lower cost for taxpayers.
Bear says he's working with lawmakers on a plan to use more bracelets if they're cost-effective. ..News Source.. by Gil Halsted, Wisconsin Public Radio
November 25, 2008
MI- GPS tethers gain popularity as alternative to jail
11-25-2008 Michigan:
Budget cuts, crowding boost devices' appeal
As municipalities nationwide struggle to slash expenses and balance their budgets in the tough economy, communities are left with fewer available beds in their county jails and state prisons -- a fact that has law enforcement officials turning to cost-saving GPS tethers in record numbers.
Local agencies and national experts say that the tethers -- which track suspected and convicted criminals' whereabouts via global positioning satellite signals -- are expected to become even more prevalent in coming years.
"The budget crisis creates an incentive to expand a relatively small program," said Paul Taylor, chief strategy officer with the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies.
"In this economy, you can't just hire more officers, build more jails and have more beds."
The boom already is apparent in metro Detroit, especially in Wayne County, which last year expanded its tether program to include persons charged with nonviolent felonies. Previously, county-issued tethers were available only to those charged with misdemeanors.
That change led to the number of defendants monitored by GPS to nearly triple, from 163 to 450, between Oct. 1, 2007, and Oct. 1 this year.
"These allow courts to look into options other than traditional incarceration," said Lt. Pat Owen, who oversees the Wayne County Sheriff's program. "This provides an added level of enforcement."
They also save municipalities big bucks: While housing an inmate in the Wayne County Jail costs $121 a day, the tether costs $12 a day to lease. And while 15 officers are needed to run a jail floor with 128 inmates, just three officers can monitor as many people on tethers.
"And then you have no medical costs, no feeding, no physical plant," Owen said.
Like Wayne County, Oakland and Macomb counties are slowly expanding their programs, though officials in each area said they still have fewer than 100 defendants on tether at a time.
Oakland County recently extended its tether program through fiscal year 2009 at a cost of $300,000, Undersheriff Mike McCabe said.
Technology is effective
While tethers in some form have been used for more than two decades, the technology has shifted. Instead of tether wearers having to be home and near a phone line at certain hours, their movements are tracked in real time.
The tether tattles if someone gets too close to a complainant, violates judge-imposed curfews or tries to tamper with or remove the device.
The tethers are used both pre- and post-conviction. At the county level, judges can order suspects to wear them as a condition of their release on bond. State departments of corrections, meanwhile, order parolees to wear them.
Judge Richard Caretti, chief of Macomb County Circuit Court, said judges are becoming more comfortable releasing defendants on the tethers.
"The technology has proven effective," said Caretti, whose county is so strapped for jail beds that judges take part in a jail bed allocation program that limits the number of defendants each judge can send to the county jail.
But Caretti said that though the devices are effective, most judges will steer clear of putting risky people on tether.
"Its use is limited to a certain type of case," he said. "The tethers are a very useful tool in situations where you have concerns that the defendant may be at risk for contacting a complainant."
Judges also have to balance a defendant's right to a reasonable bail with public safety, he said.
"So you set a bail that's reasonable and then impose conditions to protect the complainant and the public, and GPS tethers seem to work," he said.
When the devices are used
GPS tethers typically are used in crimes with lesser sentences -- such as larceny and stalking cases. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick brought tethers into the limelight locally in August when he was ordered to wear one as a condition of his bond during his criminal proceedings involving the text message scandal.
But today, even some murder suspects have been allowed to post bail if they agree to wear the trackers.
Warren resident Joseph Eplett, who is charged with open murder in the fatal shooting of a friend of his mother's, was freed Nov. 13 on a $100,000 bond and ordered to wear a GPS tether because 37th District Judge John Chmura felt comfortable that Eplett isn't a threat to others and will show up for his court dates.
Also in Macomb County, murder suspect Michael George -- charged in the 1990 shooting death of his wife, Barbara -- was placed under house arrest on a GPS tether, despite facing a first-degree murder charge. George had a spotless record in the years after his wife's death and wasn't deemed a flight risk.
Owen said that since Wayne County expanded its tether program, officials have kept careful track to make sure it's working. Last year, 85% of GPS tether wearers never hiccupped. Eleven percent violated the program in some form, usually by not complying with the judge-imposed curfew, and were taken off the tethers and returned to jail.
The remaining 4% are what law enforcement calls "cut and runs," meaning they removed the device and had to be chased down and rearrested.
Owen said that 4% has to be eliminated altogether.
"We don't want it to ever happen," he said. "The best I can do is diligently monitor my participants. If they end up doing something they're not supposed to be doing, or going somewhere they're not supposed to be going, then I need to be able to react and bring them back into the jail."
Taylor, from the Center for Digital Government, said the tether boom is just beginning.
"If you scale from small to medium to big too fast, there would be some inevitable things that could go wrong, and when you're dealing with criminal offenders, that usually means someone ends up in harm's way," he said.
But judges -- who have to "negotiate the brick-and-mortar overpopulation" at local jails -- already are showing they're comfortable with today's technology, he said.
And tomorrow promises to be better.
"There's been a natural tendency to be conservative in scaling these programs up," he said, "but with the budget crunch, it will be fascinating to watch in upcoming years how widespread they become." ..News Source.. by AMBER HUNT • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
August 14, 2008
AL- Ala. to ask for extension for GPS program
8-14-2008 Alabama:
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Officials at the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles are hoping the fourth time will be the charm for a pilot program that monitors sex offenders with Global Positioning System devices.
Parole board internal affairs director Mike Feehan said Wednesday the board plans to issue a new Invitation to Bid for vendors "within days." It will be the fourth invitation since a $600,000 federal grant was awarded to the program 2 1/2 years ago.
He also said the board will file for a two-year extension for the grant, which is set to expire Nov. 30.
Vendor contracts have been awarded before but were scrapped after those with losing bids filed complaints over technical glitches in the process.
The state is looking for companies to provide the GPS devices and software as well as some help with monitoring.
An emergency service agreement was reached with Omnilink Systems last October and 21 inmates were outfitted with the devices. But the program stalled again in March when it was discovered that Omnilink wasn't registered to do business in the state.
"This time we're going to monitor every little microscopic piece of it to ensure there's not a problem," Feehan said of the agency's latest attempt to get the program running.
"I can probably guarantee you there is going to be a protest — at least one — because that's how this industry works," he said. "There's a few vendors in particular who do that every time they don't get the bid."
Inmates who were in the program during its brief implementation had committed a range of crimes, though most were sex offenders. Their GPS devices were removed when the program was halted in March, and they are being monitored in other ways, Feehan said.
The program will track a small number of inmates in Mobile, Montgomery and Birmingham for about 22 months. During that time, officials will compare caseloads and see how much money is saved by supervised release instead of keeping the inmates behind bars.
Feehan said the program could be used throughout the state if it's successful.
State Rep. Marc Keahey, D-Grove Hill, is chairman of the Legislature's Contract Review Committee and said he's glad the project is back on track to keep the state from losing a valuable grant.
"It's very critical that we get the project implemented as quick as we can. It's been a long process this past six months dealing with this situation," he said.
But Keahey said he's not convinced sex offenders should be included.
"I think personally ... it's more difficult for a true sex offender to change," he said.
Feehan said the idea is to give judges another option in their parole and probation sentencing, using the program as a way to monitor people who they would not approve of releasing otherwise.
Chris Bence, chief of staff for Attorney General Troy King, said that's why King is also against using the program for sex offenders.
"It's his opinion that other less serious offenders should be released, and that frees up an equal amount of bed space," he said. ..News Source.. by DESIREE HUNTER
July 23, 2008
PA- Auditor general wants sex-offender GPS tracking
So often we see politicians claim there is a problem, and suggest a solution that just doesn't make sense.
The Problem: Roughly 10% of ALL registered sex offenders (RSOs) did not live at the address they registered at.
The Solution: When sex offenders leave prison make ALL of them wear a GPS unit.
There is no logical connection between the problem and the solution. Most RSOs got out of prison 5-10-20-30 years ago and some percentage of them are not keeping their addresses current. So how does making NEW sex offenders released from prison solve the problem of past sex offenders not keeping their addresses current?
What he suggests is, to punish newly released sex offenders for things former sex offenders are doing. A "class punishment," and , an enhanced punishment for those who failed to keep addresses current, when they are caught.
Is logic lost when folks become public servants? I wonder, are the police verifying addresses, and if not, does that need to be addressed? Just a logical thought which seems to have escaped political thinking.
7-22-2008 Pennsylvania:
Sex offenders who are released from prison should be monitored more widely by global positioning satellite technology so that law enforcement officers do not lose track of them as often, Pennsylvania's auditor general said Tuesday.
Auditor General Jack Wagner urged state lawmakers to require at least five years of GPS monitoring for sex offenders who do not comply with Megan's Law, which requires them to register their address with state police upon their release from prison.
The law should also be revised to mandate similar tracking of sexually violent predators whose victims are children immediately after they are released, Wagner said.
The recommendations were included in a report Wagner released at a Capitol news conference. Auditors determined in early June that the state lost track of more than 900 sex offenders, or about 10 percent of all registered sex offenders, based on apparently outdated addresses in Pennsylvania's Megan's Law registry.
"This is very disturbing to me ... and should be to every Pennsylvanian, and quite frankly, is unacceptable," Wagner said.
GPS systems allow tracking of offenders using a monitor attached to an ankle bracelet and a small tracking device that offenders must carry with them whenever they leave the house. The device transmits information that allows authorities to view an offender's location on a computerized map.
Wagner, who is seeking re-election this year to a second four-year term, previously criticized the state's Megan's Law enforcement in a 2006 audit that found state police had not verified the whereabouts of 700 sex offenders.
-There it is, reelection, and he needs the Sex Offender Stigma to carry him through reelection, it has nothing to do with safety which he uses as a pretext...
State law currently allows, but does not mandate, the use of sex offender GPS monitoring by county probation authorities and the state Board of Probation and Parole.
Republican Sens. Jane Orie of Allegheny County and John Rafferty of Chester County said they are planning introduce legislation that would require wider use of GPS tracking. They said they hope a bill will be considered when the Legislature returns to Harrisburg in the fall.
At least 24 other states have laws requiring GPS monitoring of certain sex offenders, and 14 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties are using GPS tracking for that purpose, Wagner said.
Gov. Ed Rendell's administration had no immediate comment on Wagner's recommendations. Spokesmen for Rendell and the state police said their offices needed to evaluate them.
The probation and parole board is preparing to embark in the coming weeks on a pilot program to test the equipment of eight GPS vendors, spokeswoman Sherry Tate said. She did not know where the testing would be performed or how many sex offenders would be involved.
A previous test program that ran between October 2005 and June 2006 was riddled with problems, such as lost or blocked signals, she said.
"We found the technology was not sufficient at the time," Tate said.
-And nothing has changed since, all the old problems continue to plague GPS units.
Counties that use GPS tracking typically pay for it by charging sex offenders one-time hookup fees of $30 to $50 and daily rates of $5 to $20 to cover the equipment costs, Wagner said.
In Lycoming County, officials have spent more than $10,000 since January on GPS monitoring, said chief adult probation officer Bob McCullough. Offenders who cannot pay for the full cost of the monitoring are placed on a payment schedule, and in some cases they are allowed to work off those costs by performing community service, he said.
"We have had no problems whatsoever in terms of offenders paying their obligation," McCullough said.
-Could it be that they only had RSOs who could afford it, use it, certainly homeless folks cannot afford such fees when they cannot afford a place to live.
Like similar laws in all 50 states, Pennsylvania's Megan's Law is named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and killed in 1994 by a twice-convicted sex offender who lived near her home. ..News Source.. by MARTHA RAFFAELE
