11-15-2009 California:
California’s Inspector General just released a report rebuking his state’s parole agencies, specifically their management of the GPS tracking system designed to keep sex offenders in line. However, while some media outlets have claimed the GPS tracking itself is faulty, the report makes clear that the technology was simply misused, or rather, underused, by some law enforcement.
The failure was brought to light by a recent and highly publicized kidnapping case. From the late 1980s, convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido was under surveillance by federal and state officials and subject to visits and interviews by parole officers. However, in 1991 he and his wife allegedly kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard and held her captive for 18 years, subjecting the girl to horrific abuse. Thankfully, Jaycee managed to get to safety this past summer and was finally reunited with her family. Both Garrido and his wife were arrested shortly thereafter. What is baffling to some is how Garrido was able to hide this activity from his parole officers, who were supposed to have conducted surprise visits and frequent checkups. Many too are angered that Garrido was released from prison in 1988 after serving only 11 years of his 50 year sentence.
According to the report, parole officers failed to classify Garrido as a dangerous offender, despite his previous rape conviction. When Garrido was fitted with a GPS tracking ankle bracelet, his case officers largely ignored violations of his traveling restrictions. In fact, 276 violations were logged by the GPS tracking system, but none were actually investigated. Officials say this was because Garrido was registered under the “passive” GPS tracking system reserved for low-level offenders, but clearly his behavioral profile was misjudged.If "passive GPS system violations" are regularly ignored, why have them at all?
The report claims that the GPS tracking system gave California parole officers a “false sense of security” that allowed them to ignore warnings sent by Garrido’s bracelet. According to officials linked with the agency, violations of traveling regulations are widespread, and rules are simply not enforced. California law requires each of the state’s 7,000 sex offenders to be fitted with a GPS tracking device, but if these individuals have discovered that they can disregard moving restrictions without penalty, what good is the technology doing anyone?
GPS tracking systems are only worthwhile if the location data they provide is acted upon. Fortunately, the report recommends that California begin to do just that. Violations will now be penalized, and parole officers will more closely monitor offenders. It’s just sad to see such a horrific case was required to jolt some authorities into action. ..Source.. by Greg Bartlett
November 15, 2009
When Does GPS Tracking Fail? (A Difference of opinions)
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
August 16, 2009
AZ- DOC: Mistake Let Rapist Terrorize Girls
GPS units simply do not work, especially if you forget to turn them on!
8-16-2009 Arizona:
Ryan: 'It Was A Human Error' That Allowed Parolee To Ditch Ankle Monitor
PHOENIX -- “It was a human error on the part of our staff,” Director Charles Ryan told CBS 5 Friday.
Ryan said officers strapped a Pro Tech monitor to Salvador Medina’s ankle on Aug. 6, but failed to turn on the tracking device.
“The mistake that I'm aware that our officers made was the failure of activating the device,” Ryan said.
Police say Medina went on a crime spree after being released from the 16th Street parole office in Phoenix at noon.
Police said he kidnapped three sisters, ages 15, 15, and 11 at about 4:15 p.m.
Police said he held the victims under the threat of killing the 11-year-old girl if any of them tried to escape, and sexually assaulted both 15-year-old girls.
Police said at about 9:15 p.m., Medina approached two women with a 3-year-old child. Investigators said he asked them for money and put a knife to the abdomen of one of the women when she refused.
“I would probably say to the victims I'm sorry that you have been victimized by this individual,” Ryan said.
Ryan said even if the Pro Tech monitor was on, it could have been hours before anyone started looking for Medina.
"I don't know that would prevent the crime from occurring. All it would tell us if the last known whereabouts of the individual,” Ryan said.
The alert that should have been sent out would have been received by Medina’s parole officer, who is in the office until 5 or 6 p.m. each evening.
If Medina removed the monitor after the officer had left for the day, no one would have been notified until the next morning.
Ryan says parole officers will now test ankle monitors to make sure they have been activated.
He also said DOC’s communication center, which is monitored 24/7, will immediately receive an alert when a sex offender tampers with or removes their ankle bracelet.
Ryan would not say if the officer or officers who failed to activate Medina’s monitor will be fired, but said he plans to hold whoever is responsible accountable. ..Source.. by Sarah Buduson, Reporter, KPHO.com
August 11, 2009
AZ- DOC Admits Problem With Ankle Monitor
8-11-2009 Arizona:
PHOENIX -- Department of Corrections officials say they were never alerted a convicted sex offender had removed his ankle monitor.
Police say Salvador Medina went on a crime spree last Thursday that included rape, robbery and kidnapping after removing the tracking device.
He was captured after he called police to request help.
The convicted sex offender had been released from prison that day. By 4 p.m. police say he had taken off the Pro Tech Monitoring anklle bracelet.
Corrections officials are supposed to be notified immediately when there is any problem with the devices.
"In my case, typically we receive a notification that somebody's tampered with their ankle or removed within 30 seconds or a minute,” Chuck Thomas said.
He runs Probationary Monitoring Services of Arizona, which monitors some DOC parolees for the state.
He said an alert will not be sent if a monitor has a dead battery or is out of range of cell phone service.
However, Thomas said officials are usually immediately notified if the tracking device is not working properly.
“Yes, you can get out of them,” he said. “But not without somebody knowing about it in some way shape or form.”
DOC officials have refused repeated interviews requests, but said in an e-mail response that they are investigating why an alert was not sent.
Pro Tech Monitoring, which manufactured the monitor Medina was wearing, was not available for comment Monday evening. ..Source.. by Sarah Buduson, Reporter, KPHO.com
April 2, 2009
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
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
September 23, 2008
CT- False Alarms Common With GPS Monitoring
9-23-2008 Connecticut:
Rapist’s case reveals flaws in using technology to track offenders
Gov. M. Jodi Rell and other Connecticut officials seemed shocked to learn that global positioning system devices used to monitor movements of a released serial rapist and other sex offenders could give faulty readings. But they should not have been.
In recent years, officials and researchers in several states have noted with concern that false alarms – instances in which GPS devices provide incorrect locations for former convicts or lose track of them entirely -- are fairly common.
In some places, law enforcement authorities have asked lawmakers not to mandate widespread GPS monitoring because of the time, money and manpower needed to check out hundreds or thousands of potentially erroneous reports.
A report prepared by the Indiana Department of Correction last year gave GPS monitoring a mixed review. “While GPS monitoring serves as a useful tool for parole agents to know the locations of their particular parolees, some of the drawbacks of being too staff intensive, loss of coverage and faulty alerts may prevent the GPS technology from completing its intended task,” the Indiana report stated.
The study said that widespread GPS use could “inundate local police” with faulty alerts. It did state, however, that the number should drop as technology evolves.
“It remains an imperfect science,” said William Carbone, director of court support services for Connecticut’s Judicial Branch, who has spoken to officials in other states about GPS monitoring issues. “Everyone is recognizing that it’s got some limitations.”
The drawbacks came to light in Connecticut in an incident involving serial rapist David Pollitt, who was released last fall after serving 24 years in prison. When Pollitt went to live with his sister in Southbury, he was fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet that tracks his movements with satellite technology.
In early September, Pollitt was arrested on a probation violation after officials said he had left his sister’s yard for about 15 minutes. Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who had adamantly opposed Pollitt’s release last year, immediately called for his return to prison.
But Pollitt and his sister said he never left the property. One of Pollitt’s lawyers said his ankle unit has been replaced more than five times in 11 months because it repeatedly tracks him in the wrong location. Attorney Ioannis A. Kaloidis also said Pollitt had logged at least 44 false alerts.
Two days after the arrest, state officials withdrew the warrant after the Florida-based company that provides monitoring services for Connecticut acknowledged that Pollitt’s GPS system wasn’t working properly on the day in question.
Pro Tech Monitoring Inc. of Odessa, Fla., monitors about 200 people on probation and 50 people on parole in Connecticut, with the latter group consisting entirely of sex offenders. Pro Tech is a subcontractor for California-based G4S Justice Services Inc., which has a $950,000-a-year contract with the Judicial Branch.
“There is simply no excuse for this malfunction,” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a prepared statement. “An investigation should be done as quickly as possible because tracking dangerous convicted parolees can be a matter of life and death.”
Rell also released a statement. “This incident raises a number of troubling questions: Is the GPS system we are using reliable? Can we be sure this will not happen again?”
Tunnels And Snow
The answer to that question is an unequivocal “no.”
In Arizona, a 2007 legislative study found that in the state’s first year of using GPS monitoring, more than 35,000 false alerts were generated by 140 people wearing monitoring devices. In California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a champion of the tracking devices, officials have said that something as simple as low batteries on ankle bracelets are among the many factors that can lead to false alarms.
“People expect GPS to have almost a ‘Star Trek’-like technology, that we sort of know in very real time where people are moment to moment,” Suzanne Brown-McBride, chairwoman of the California Sex Offender Management Board, told PBS’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” in January. “What I think the public doesn't understand is that false alarms are common, [sex offenders] dropping off of the map is fairly common.”
In Washington State, a 2003 study by the Department of Corrections found that GPS systems can give faulty readings when offenders are inside steel buildings or tunnels or outside when it’s snowing. In 2006, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs opposed proposed legislation to expand use of GPS tracking devices, saying that, given the likelihood of false alarms, they did not want the burden of having to check out every report that someone on probation or parole was in the wrong place.
In Minnesota, state correction department officials reacted similarly to a legislative proposal in 2006 that would have expanded GPS monitoring from about 20 sex offenders to more than 300. Ken Merz, director of administrative programs for the state Corrections Department, told Minnesota Public Radio the state would have to hire hundreds of additional agents to monitor sex offenders because the agents would spend so much time responding to false alarms.
In outlying areas, Merz said, “that could mean quite a distance that agent will have to drive to check on something that may very well be a technology problem.”
Better Technology
Still, there are many proponents who say the ability to trace the movements of potentially dangerous people cannot be overstated.
Some two dozen states use some sort of GPS monitoring. In Rhode Island, which is about to launch a GPS monitoring program, a private company has received a federal grant to pioneer a technology that is supposed to be far more accurate in tracking offenders.
But even its many supporters caution that GPS technology should be used selectively, with the focus on offenders deemed most likely to commit new crimes. They also say that a GPS reading alone is usually not sufficient to arrest someone on a parole or probation violation.
In Connecticut, a sweeping criminal justice bill approved this spring provided additional funding for GPS monitoring of offenders. Carbone, the state’s director of court support services, said the advantage of GPS monitoring is that it shows the exact whereabouts of a sex offender or other lawbreaker, while regular electronic monitoring simply indicates whether a person has left his home.
“We view it as one tool in the toolbox,” said Carbone, who added that it must be used in conjunction with other techniques, such as parole and probation officers being in regular contact with former offenders, their employers and family members. “It’s a technology that won’t always be accurate. [We] have to use it with an eye toward limitations in the system.”
He said the limitations are similar to those of cell phones, which use similar satellite technology and don’t work well in some places or under some conditions. Even with the inherent limitations, Carbone said state officials have a right to be upset with the Florida monitoring company in the Pollitt case because of errors made in analyzing the data.
Carbone said the Judicial Branch is doing its own investigation, including reviewing the contracts with the outside vendors. That, he said, would take about three weeks.
In the meantime, defense attorneys in Connecticut call the continued use of GPS monitoring “an absolute abomination,” in the words of Edward J. Gavin, of Meehan, Meehan & Gavin of Bridgeport.
Meehan, the new president of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, noted the same problems as other states have found – that the GPS systems are often unreliable, and that monitoring sex offenders and others using satellite technology requires an enormous amount of manpower. He said he doubted that the state would be willing to spend the money to provide adequate oversight.
“GPS is only as good as the people who monitor it,” said Meehan. “If you don’t have someone monitoring it, it’s a waste of time and a poor use of resources.”•
..News Source.. by DOUGLAS S. MALAN and PAUL SUSSMAN
September 11, 2008
TN- Missing sex offender caught in Knoxville
9-11-2008 Tennessee:
Authorities are trying to figure out how a sex offender, required to wear a GPS tracking device, managed to go missing. That man has now been found in Knoxville.
Charles Terrance Hartley has twice been convicted of attempted aggravated sexual battery. He is classified as a violent sex offender on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's registry.
His address is listed as homeless.
The 46-year-old was required by a court order to wear a GPS tracking device.
But that device was apparently never activated.
Knoxville Police arrested Hartley around 10:30 Wednesday night. He was transfered to the Anderson County jail around midnight.
Now, authorities are trying to sort out how Hartley's tracking device was not activated. ..News Source.. by WBIR.com
August 23, 2008
MA- When electronic monitor fails....
Did the GPS Monitor Fail? Or, did the people who programmed the monitor fail? From the facts we cannot tell whether the monitor failed to function (ex: lost battery power), and we do not know where the second crime occurred. Therefore, we cannot tell whether the monitor would have worked if it had been programmed for where the second crime occurred. GPS units will do exactly what they are programmed to do, they are machines and not subject to rational decisionmaking.
8-23-2008 Massachusetts:
The week opened with reports that the local summer golf classic had, as usual, produced a dramatic and inspiring story line, a hometown parallel to some of the activity in Beijing that has provided a pleasant diversion as the summer clock ticks down toward Labor Day. But it closed with the shadow of sexual endangerment of children casting a dark blot over thoughts of fun and games.
Faith in the value of electronic devices to monitor criminal suspects was seriously undercut by an incident reported Friday. Paul A. McKay, 44, of North Attleboro, stands accused of raping a 17-year-old girl in Norton despite being equipped a GPS device while he was free on bail while awaiting trial for the indecent assault of a 14-year-old girl.
Adding to the outrageousness of the case is that the second victim is the sister of the first and is a witness to the crime against her. McKay has had his bail revoked and been sent back to jail. A community is left wondering why he had been allowed to go free at all.
-He was let go presuming, yes he would not commit another crime, but really because the judge, by ordering a GPS unit, relied on that working as he thought it would, if it had been properly programmed.
Meanwhile, already notorious locally as a sexual offender, Timothy Vacher, 31, was arrested Thursday for violating the probation that followed a prison term he was given after indecently touching a 6-year-old girl in 1996. He has admitted to leering at two young girls in a local department store.
No physical contact was made, but observers are quick to point out that might not have been the case had not the girls' mother quickly interceded; that the incident indicates a lack of control on Vacher's part, and there have been indications his behavior is escalating. Given the potential for danger to the most precious members of the community, a judge's decision to send him back to prison for 21/2 years is most welcome
Vacher's lawyer had asked for continued probation and electronic monitoring. That request sounds particularly hollow in light of the McKay case. Same mistake twice?
We would expect college presidents to have a better than average sense of history, but we'd give the group who this week called for a lowering of the drinking age to 18 an F in that subject.
Massachusetts went down that road in 1971. The Vietnam War and the draft were still going on and the argument "if you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to drink" proved compelling here, as in some other states. Over the next half-dozen years, the body count from teen drunk driving fatalities proved unacceptable and the minimum age was phased back up to 21.
It's noteworthy that the leaders of colleges in Sun Chronicle country who remember or are otherwise aware of those bad old days oppose the drinking age change. We give them an A. ... ..Opinion Source.. by The Sun Monitor
April 6, 2008
Sex offenders tracking plan shelved
4-6-2008 United Kingdom:
The Government has ditched plans to use satellite tracking to keep tabs on sex offenders.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) officials said the project had been shelved until there had been "developments in technology".
A two-year pilot scheme was launched in 2004 as part of the Government's so-called "prisons without bars" project, but studies found the equipment had serious drawbacks.
For example, the signal could be blocked or distorted by high rise buildings or even trees.
An assessment published by the MoJ last July found one in four sex offenders freed early on a satellite tag were reconvicted of a further offence within a matter of months.
The technology involved offenders wearing an ankle bracelet similar to conventional electronic tags, which relayed their movements via satellite to a control room.
Entering an "exclusion zone" - such as a paedophile going near a children's playground or school - would trigger an alarm.
Ministers are now believed to be pinning their hopes on using lie detectors as a new technique to deal with paedophiles.
Assistant general secretary of probation union Napo, Harry Fletcher, said: "The abandonment of satellite tracking comes as no surprise. It was hugely expensive and the signal failed when confronted with tall buildings, low cloud or other obstacles."
H added: "It remains the case, however, that sufficient controls should be in place for each individual case to maximise public protection." ..more.. by The Press Association
March 12, 2008
WI- Assembly outlaws tampering with sex offender signals
3-11-2008 Wisconsin:
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The state Assembly has passed a bill that would outlaw tampering with the signal from a sex offender's Global Positioning System unit.
The state Department of Corrections uses GPS to track the movement of serious sex offenders after they're freed. Meddling with an offender's tracking device already is illegal.
The bill would make tampering with the devices' signals a felony punishable by up to three years and 6 months in prison and $10,000 in fines.
The bill goes to the state Senate. ..more.. by AP
February 20, 2008
GPS for state sex offenders gets split verdict
Does tracking system cut crime? Opinions differ
12-12-2007 Oregon:
The other day, Christopher Ervin wanted to check on a sex offender, a Seattle man who had preyed on two teens, and was homeless.
Normally, Ervin, a community corrections officer, would have made some calls and visits. But this time, he simply fired up his computer and looked for the green dot. It told him everything.
As it moved on a map, the dot told him that the offender had woken up around 5 a.m. and milled around downtown.
Most important, the dot told Ervin that the 23-year-old man was not at work, but had taken a bus to a skateboarding hangout and the Southcenter Mall.
"Part of his pattern is that he hangs out with his buddies, starts slacking off, stops working," said Ervin's supervisor, Theo Lewis.
Officers were concerned that the man, who had raped a teenage girl and had sexually groomed a troubled teenage boy, might have been hanging around young people again.
"He went to jail."
Outfitted with an ankle bracelet and a GPS tracker, the offender -- who declined to comment for the story -- is part of a booming national trend that has put thousands of sex offenders under the 24-hour, pinpoint-locating watch of satellite surveillance.
More than 40 states use the Global Positioning System to track offenders. At least 15 require some kind of lifetime monitoring. In California, voters passed a punitive law last year requiring all felony sex offenders -- about 4,000 people -- to wear a tracker for life.
"We have so much business that we can hardly keep up with manufacturing. We're exploding," said David Segal, vice president of software development for Florida-based Pro Tech Monitoring, the country's main provider of GPS correctional trackers.
In Washington, tracking was a largely unfunded, little-used program until September, when Gov. Chris Gregoire ordered immediate funding for it. She was prompted by the rape and killing of 12-year-old Tacoma girl Zina Linnik, allegedly by known sex offender Terapon Adhahn.
The program remains small, with 13 offenders as of last week. Most are watched retroactively. The 23-year-old offender is an exception, with an "active" device that sends data in real time.
As more states use GPS, some have found it to be a devil's bargain. Corrections officers praise the tool's helpfulness, but curse the immense amount of work it creates.
The technology appeases a fearful public, but is controversial on whether it truly reduces crime. Industry and corrections experts say it does, but researchers say little evidence supports that, because few studies exist.
Studies on electronic monitoring in general, which includes low-tech home detention, have not boded well, researchers say.
"Overall, we would say (electronic monitoring tools) are not effective at reducing recidivism," said Roxanne Lieb, executive director of the Washington State Institute of Public Policy.
But none of that has stopped the escalating number of offenders in the country forced to wear bracelets, estimated to be at least 10,000 to 15,000 on a given day.
With the surge has come struggle. In Florida, after lawmakers ordered trackers for sex offenders with convictions after 2005 and victims under 15, corrections officers buckled under the work.
Unlike Washington's mostly retroactive system, Florida's GPS devices send immediate alerts when an offender misses curfew, enters an exclusion zone such as a school, or commits other violations.
But with more than 1,100 offenders on trackers, officers were receiving so many alerts they had to hand over lesser breaches -- a lost signal or dead batteries -- to a private contractor.
"It does create a huge workload.... Somebody has to review all the location data and be on call," said Shawn Satterfield, chief of community-based programs for Florida's Department of Corrections.
In California, the new measure known as "Jessica's Law" has been mired in legal challenges and debates over funding and process. Of the 4,000 offenders required to carry a tracker, only roughly 2,000 have them, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Gregoire has said she wants tracking to expand to 150 sex offenders by 2009. Rep. Skip Priest, R-Federal Way, wants more.
He plans to introduce legislation to require GPS tracking of all offenders who are Level 3 or have failed to register, whose numbers he estimated at 2,800. Level 3 offenders are those with the highest risk of reoffending.
"I don't want to go to Zina Linnik's family and say there were ideas proven around the country that were available, but we failed to use," he said.
He questioned why the program is so small, given that Gregoire tapped $400,000 in emergency funds for it, and the usual daily cost per offender is only $10 for the equipment.
Anna Aylward, state Department of Corrections program administrator, said the program is small because initially only Level 3 offenders with convictions dating back to 2006 were eligible. That was a pool of 32 people.
State attorneys decided recently that convictions could date back as far as July 1, 2000, enlarging the pool to 200 offenders. Each will be scrutinized for compliance problems and risk factors, such as lack of housing.
Aylward said the program is so new that the department hasn't determined the total cost.
"We're still figuring how much time it takes to start, to hook them up," she said.
"We're really kind of shooting from the hip."
So far, the experience has been too short to assess. One offender cut off his bracelet, tossed it in some bushes and was quickly arrested. Another told his corrections officer he liked how the tracker eliminated him as a suspect in any nearby crimes.
Homeless offenders have been a challenge, with officers having to hunt down phone and electrical outlets. Most trackers need to be plugged in to recharge batteries and download data, usually once a night.
As tracking becomes more widespread, some people worry about a false sense of security, because most sexual-assault victims know the offender.
"When we think about child molesting, which is what the public is most worried about, it is taking advantage of relationships with kids -- through families, friends, neighborhoods, youth activities," said Lucy Berliner, director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress.
"I don't think (GPS tracking) will have any impact on that."
Law-enforcement officials are the first to agree. "It's not a panacea. It won't prevent a crime," said Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
"If I went into my front yard with GPS, I could be standing on the sidewalk, luring a victim to have a cookie."
But he believes GPS is useful in motivating offenders to behave and in detecting risk of recidivism.
"You start to slide into that behavior," Pierce said. "So instead of driving straight home, I drive by a school. The next day I drive slower. Then I park. If I'm not being tracked, nobody knows. But the first day I detour, it's going to know."
But he opposed any blanket tracking requirement, especially in crimes against relatives. "We would rather spend our resources counseling family members." ..more.. by VANESSA HO, P-I REPORTER
February 19, 2008
Technology keeps eye on sex offenders
2-19-2008 Missouri:
Nobody wants them. But everyone wants to know where they are.
So cities and states are forging new laws and using the latest technologies to keep tabs on hundreds of thousands of convicted sex offenders.
Their home addresses are considered public information. Some wear bracelets that can be tracked by satellite and cell phone towers. Others are forced to give their online identities and screen names to parole officers. Some communities are limiting where offenders can live.
The ability to track them, safety advocates say, is one of the best ways to protect the public. If you know where the bad people are, they say, it's easier to keep an eye on them. Or to avoid them altogether.
Critics, however, say new laws and restrictions make it impossible for sex offenders to be anything more than social outcasts. And there are those who worry about putting so much emphasis on what they characterize as a small piece of the sexual crime problem.
There are a host of online databases — often free to use — that can pinpoint nearby sex offenders. Search by city or ZIP code. Check everyone within a mile of your house.
That's what Courtney McIntyre did two years ago when she was shopping for a house in Collinsville. She found a half dozen sex offenders — including one right down the street from her new home.
"It does bother me. Every time I drive by, I look at his house," said McIntyre, who has three children. And unless her husband is around, she said, "we don't walk down that end of the street."
Registries aren't new. Most are the result of laws passed nationwide after a 7-year-old New Jersey girl, Megan Kanka, was raped and murdered in 1994 by a neighbor who turned out to be a twice-convicted sex offender.
What's changing is the ease of access and the options available. More than 600,000 registered sex offenders can be found in state and national databases, run both by government and private industry. Along with limited details of the crime committed, you can often find mug shots, aerial photos of the offender's residence and maps of the surrounding area.
New Hampshire-based Ektron Inc., which has been working with the Pennsylvania attorney general, is developing a system that would send an e-mail alert whenever an offender has moved into the neighborhood. It would eliminate the need for people to do their own frequent searches, said Ed Rogers, the company's chief operating officer.
Not everyone is a fan, however. While registries have survived legal challenges, some people worry about the impact they have on the sex offenders trying to put their lives back together. No other class of criminal, they argue, is treated with such scrutiny.
"Why don't we have registries of burglars and those who do assaults?" asked Evan Harrington, a professor of psychology at the Chicago School. "Why is it just sex crimes?"
That's one of the things that bothers Ricky Cole, a registered offender who lives in downtown St. Louis. Cole, who was convicted of statutory rape, has been out of prison for three years.
"They need to be investigating why kids are walking around with guns as big as they are," Cole said. "They're worried about the wrong thing."
A STRONGER APPROACH
Studies have shown that sex offenders are less likely than other criminals to get in trouble again. A landmark Justice Department study in 1994 showed that 43 percent of sex offenders were arrested for a new crime — 5.3 percent for another sex offense — within three years of being paroled from prison. The arrest rate of those who were not sex offenders was 68 percent.
Such studies, however, have been called unreliable by safety advocates, who say many sex crimes, particularly incest and child molestation, are never reported to police.
Note: This is not true and if folks goto the study shown above and review the charts you will see that the Justice Department addressed this specific issue in that study.
"It's absolutely necessary for the public to be able to see where the sex offenders live," said Stacie Rumenap, executive director of Stop Child Predators, a nonprofit in Washington. "It's not a punishment. It's a public safety issue."
Her group is part of a growing nationwide movement that says simply knowing the offender's street address isn't enough.
Sparked by the 2005 rape and murder of a 9-year-old Florida girl, many states are taking a more forceful approach, particularly against violent offenders or those who sexually assault children.
A hallmark of Florida's Jessica Lunsford Act is mandatory lifetime GPS tracking after an offender is released from prison. The idea has caught on, with dozens of states enacting similar laws.
Such monitoring costs around $20 a month for each offender. Generally using a mixture of GPS and cellular networks, offenders can be monitored passively or actively. Their movements might be checked only if there is a question about recent travels, or they might be watched constantly by someone at a computer screen.
"They leave a trail of virtual bread crumbs," said Alex Brisbourne, president of KORE Telematics, a company that provides network service for tracking systems.
It's also possible to declare certain areas, or even people, off-limits through the use of virtual fences and personal monitors. Previous victims, for example, could be notified whenever their attacker is nearby, said Daniel Graff-Radford, a vice president with Omnilink Systems, a Georgia company that monitors offenders for 100 agencies in 38 states.
"The victim would get an alert, followed by directions on how to get away," he said.
And in what some characterize as an extreme variation of tracking technology, an Ohio company is promoting a device — which anyone could buy — that would vibrate whenever a bracelet-wearing sex offender comes within 50 yards.
For the American Civil Liberties Union, these registries and tracking plans are little more than a new way to punish men and women who have already paid their debts.
"It's not giving them a chance to have a life after they've done their time," said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU office in St. Louis. "It opens them up to harm by labeling them and pointing them out to everyone."
There also remain questions about the constitutionality of tracking bracelets, which have yet to receive the same legal stamp of approval given to registries.
"The electronic tracking thing is really new," said Eric Miller, assistant professor of law at St. Louis University. "No one is quite clear about how it's going to play out."
'UNREALISTIC ANSWER'
With so much attention focused on technology and ways to track paroled offenders, some advocates for children say there is a danger the public will let down its guard.
Most children, after all, are abused by family members and trusted friends, said Marci Hamilton, a law professor and author of the upcoming book "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children."
"It's just an unrealistic answer. It's built on quicksand," Hamilton said. "Just because you know there's a predator down the street, don't think you've identified all of the threats in your neighborhood."
Advocates say another problem is that some laws treat all offenders equally for purposes of registration. Lumping all offenders — from teen lovers to predatory child molesters — into a single group can actually make registries weaker, said Kevin McDonald, chairman of Web Wise Kids, a national organization that teaches children about online safety.
"If they all get thrown in together, the real hard-core sickos are going to get lost in the mix," McDonald said. ..more.. by Tim Barker, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
tbarker@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8350
January 4, 2008
Roaming sex offenders on the rise
Some made homeless by law barring them from areas near schools, parks
1-4-2008 California:
SAN PABLO — S.T. is a registered sex offender with a wife, three kids and a cozy apartment near Hilltop Mall. But every night he roams the dark streets in a pea coat, a wool cap and a GPS tracker strapped to his left ankle.
He'd rather stay home. But that could mean running afoul of Jessica's Law, and a return trip to prison.
So at 10 p.m. he slips on the prison shoes he wore out of San Quentin this month and walks to his favorite bus stop shelter. He and chats with the drivers. He circles the mall. Then he treks down near the Richmond BART station to watch the hookers and drug dealers and to lie on a sheet of cardboard plucked from behind a KFC.
When light breaks he shakes off the chill and heads home — but never before 7 a.m., because that's when his parole officer says it's OK, said S.T., who asked to remain anonymous, saying he fears upsetting his parole agent.
"My hands get so cold they turn actually red and get numb," he says on a recent night out. "Mentally and psychologically, I'm fighting."
Reverse curfew
S.T. lives under a kind of reverse-curfew that owes to the state's enforcement of Proposition 83, the 2006 ballot measure that bans newly released sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.
He's not alone. State corrections figures show a big spike in parolee sex offenders who, like him, are registering as transient — homeless or bouncing from bed to bed, doing anything to comply with the
2,000-foot rule.
The surge started in August, when parole agents began to enforce a law that was billed as a way to ease safety fears over children. Yet concern is mounting among state officials, parole agents, victim advocates and even the law's Republican author, that this is not the way.
Of the 3,952 parolees who now fall under the ban, nearly one in five were registered as transient last week, up from very few before the law, officials said. In the region that runs the coast from Ventura north to the Oregon border and includes the Bay Area, more than a third of the 859 sex offender parolees who fall under Jessica's Law are officially transient.
The situation is most acute in urban areas, where the 2,000-foot rule leaves few places for newly released offenders to live.
Prop. 83, or Jessica's Law, added several get-tough measures against sex offenders. The most controversial is the ban on newly released sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet — about four-tenths of a mile — of a school or park where children "regularly gather."
As judges and policymakers sort out the legal and practical implications, what has emerged is a makeshift — some say slipshod — system of enforcement.
Legal leeway
Parole agents measure off the 2,000 feet "as the crow flies," under state policy. But they have leeway over what it means to live somewhere. For S.T. and others, it's where they spend the night.
The rise in transients is a concern, said Gareth Lacy, spokesman for Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office keeps the state sex offender registry.
"It's much harder to track and manage offenders who are moving around and not in one location," he said.
Most of the transients are fitted with GPS anklets. They also must report daily to their parole agents, instead of weekly. But the tracking is no cure-all, said Mark McCarthy, a parole agent who oversees sex offenders.
"The big fallacy with GPS is that it's going to curtail crimes. It isn't going to make them not molest kids or rape women. We'll just know if they did it or not," he said. "For public safety purposes, I'd rather know where a guy's at, at home, than have him transient, out in the streets somewhere."
A state corrections official denied any policy for parole agents to tell people like S.T. to go transient. Some agents, though, say it is written between the lines of an Aug. 17 memo detailing the agency's policy on the law.
Few choices
The choices are few in some counties. In San Francisco, where state maps show virtually no compliant housing, 31 of the city's 97 Jessica's Law parolees are now registered transient.
"We had an obligation to make sure parolee's knew their options under the law," said state corrections spokesman Bill Sessa. "We weren't directing them. We were simply saying, you either have to find a compliant address or register as transient."
A third option: a parole violation and possible return to prison.
As many as 700 sex offenders are paroled each month. They all fall under the 2,000-foot rule unless a court rules otherwise. The state Supreme Court is expected to rule in spring on a challenge to the law.
"The continuing issue is there have to be places for people to live," said Sessa. "The number of sex offenders covered by the law will be constantly expanding."
Transients can't set up anywhere, said Sessa. They can't sleep, for instance, under a bridge for several nights if it's too close to a school or park, he said. But parole agents have discretion.
"There's a common-sense perspective of what it means to live somewhere," he said. "There is a balancing act here, because all the research shows that having a stable environment is the biggest key to rehabilitation, and so agents are always trying to strike a balance."
For S.T., it feels more like an imbalance.
He was convicted in 1990 of an assault with intent to commit rape against his son's teacher. Court documents say he sprayed her with mace, hit her in the head and tried to force her legs open with his knees before a school janitor came with a shovel and he ran off.
Court documents show he suffered bouts of alcoholism, depression and hallucinations. He pleaded guilty and received a 64-month prison sentence.
He has since committed other crimes, records show. The latest came early this year. He was convicted of battery on a police officer after a takedown in 2005 during an attempt to arrest him as a parolee-at-large. He bit an officer's finger. When he left prison early this month, he fell under Jessica's Law.
His wife often joins him early on his nightly journey. They hold hands and circle the mall. Then he walks her back home, across from a church school.
"This is for me to feel what he's going through," she says as they walk. "He has a place to come to. He has a family. We have children. It is so weird. He just can't be home."
S.T. says his parole officer told him: "Wherever you go, just keep it moving." That's usually what he does, if only to keep warm.
"I'm really — how would you say? — traumatized," he says. "Being in the cold, being tired, walking in the rain . . . What if I have to use the bathroom? It is very degrading."
Creativity needed
The author of Jessica's Law now says the state is misguided in its early enforcement of the law, and that policymakers need to be more "creative."
Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, described S.T.'s case as "a very tortured interpretation, obviously. Somebody in corrections has decided it was easier to go let somebody be transient than to insist that they follow the law."
Still, Runner said he never meant the law for people such as S.T. who fall under Jessica's Law only because of non-sex convictions. That borders on being retroactive, he said.
He also disagrees with how the state strictly measures 2,000 feet, when in some cases freeways split a home from a school or park. He thinks cities can better define parks. Should all of Golden Gate Park count, or only areas that children frequent?
"We're always concerned if there are issues that make something impossible to implement," he said. "We believe there's a big difference between impossible and hard. The bottom line is it's going to work."
Critics blame Runner for writing a vaguely worded law that was ripe for trouble. Corrections officials say they are merely enforcing the letter of a law that 70 percent of voters passed.
The California Sex Offender Management Board, formed under Jessica's Law, is studying the fallout and possible fixes, including the idea of "cluster-housing" for sex offenders.
"It's really about keeping sex offenders from living in a place where they have easy access to children," said Nancy O'Malley, chief assistant district attorney in Alameda County.
O'Malley couldn't grasp the purpose of S.T. wandering the streets at night.
"That's not good," she said. "What does that do?" ..more.. by John Simerman at 925-943-8072 or e-mail jsimerman@bayareanewsgroup.com
December 13, 2007
Are GPS devices for sex offenders worth it?
12-13-2007 Oregon:
More than 20 of the state's most violent sex offenders are tethered to tracking devices that document their locations within a half-block.
The devices are at the heart of Gov. Christine Gregoire's promise to keep people safe from sex predators. On Wednesday, the governor asked the state Legislature for $8.2 million to better monitor sex offenders.
Nearly $1 million would go toward purchasing the tracking sets for the Department of Corrections (DOC); About $5 million would pay for in-person visits of sex offenders by law enforcement.
But community corrections officers doubt whether the $1,500 devices — ankle bracelets, locator boxes designed to be strapped on people's belts and charging units — would ensure that sex offenders are abiding by the terms of their parole. In the two months that a dozen trackers have been used in Seattle, one offender has thrown the device away and another let the battery die — making the devices useless. Both offenders were arrested and held on suspicion of violations.
Theo Lewis, DOC community-corrections supervisor in King County's special-assault unit, said the agency doesn't have the staffing to constantly monitor offenders' whereabouts. Instead, officers check GPS data about once a day to determine where offenders have been in the past 24 hours.
"We're using it as much as we can," Lewis said. "Those people who want to disappear will take the [locator] box and throw it in the garbage can."
When an offender is assigned a GPS monitoring system, a community-corrections officer locks it into a nonremovable ankle bracelet, Lewis said. Offenders also are given a locator box, which tracks the GPS signal and can receive text messages from DOC staff.
Offenders are told to keep the locator box charged. If the battery runs out or the offender strays more than 150 feet from the locator box, the offender's tracking device beeps; community-corrections staff members also receive an e-mail update each day, Lewis said.
But expecting offenders to maintain the equipment, when many are homeless, is proving to be a challenge.
Convicted sex offender Roger Balluta, 40, walked out of the DOC office in the SoDo neighborhood with his new GPS tracking set Friday night. He headed through downtown and across the Seattle Center campus before visiting a liquor store in lower Queen Anne, according to his GPS tracking history. Balluta, who is not allowed to drink, was drunk when he was arrested Tuesday morning, according to Seattle police.
When Balluta was found, near the last spot the GPS pinpointed him, he had a 24-ounce beer in his pocket and an apology for not charging his GPS unit, Lewis said.
But, Lewis said, the majority of the offenders who have been placed on GPS supervision abide by the rules. He said many offenders see the devices as a way to prove they were abiding by the rules of their prison release.
GPS tracking is most commonly used to track Level 3 offenders, considered to be the state's most dangerous and most likely to reoffend. But Lewis said he also has given officers permission to use the tracking system on Level 2 offenders who have been a problem for corrections staff.
"A home check, an office meeting or a polygraph works the same way," Lewis said. "You're playing a game of mental chess with these people. It keeps offenders mindful of their actions."
The DOC tracking program was limited in use and lacked funding until this summer, when Gregoire pushed for changes after 12-year-old Zina Linnik, of Tacoma, was abducted and killed allegedly at the hands of a convicted sex offender. ..more.. by Associated Press
November 6, 2007
Panel to study funding of GPS monitoring for sex offenders
11-2-2007 Arizona:
At a time when the state is facing hundreds of millions of dollars of red ink, a panel hearing updates on the satellite monitoring of sex offenders is likely to focus on the cost of the program and how money is being spent, a Republican senator said.
Sen. Jim Waring, R-7, is also worried the program’s allocation could get slashed when lawmakers come in next year to address the budget deficit.
“It could get cut,” Waring said. “It is not voter-mandated. I hope that’s not the case. I hope that’s not even considered.”
In any case, Waring does not see the program expanding, given the fiscal difficulties facing the state.
Already, Waring said the current amount allocated for the Global Positioning System (GPS) monitoring of sex offenders — $1.5 million — may not be enough as more and more people are required to wear the GPS device. In 2006, Arizona required GPS monitoring on persons convicted of dangerous crimes against children, such as sex offenders, while on probation. Waring is the architect of that law.
Waring said based on preliminary data, county probation offices could run out of money enforcing the program. The senator said he would get more definitive answers when the Joint Legislative Study Committee on Global Position System Monitoring meets on Nov. 6. Probation officers will discuss implementation of the program, the meeting’s agenda stated.
“We are getting kind of short on money with the county, it sounds like,” he said.
On hindsight, Waring lamented that Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed a bill he introduced last session that would have required only the worst sex offenders — those with a Level 3 classification — to wear a GPS device but still allowed authorities to place one on other offenders.
The aim was to ensure that there would be enough money to outfit the worst offenders with the monitoring device when they are released on probation.
“I was trying to be ahead of the curve with last year’s bill,” Waring said.
Rather than run the same measure, Waring said he may try to transfer some of the money set aside for the Department of Corrections to the counties. “The Corrections Department, from what I gather — this is all preliminary — is not spending as much money.”
Waring expects to get confirmation of the information during this month’s committee hearing.
Sen. Jorge Luis Garcia, D-27, said he would prefer that lawmakers, when mulling possible cuts, survey building projects first before looking at the sex offender monitoring program.
Garcia, who has clashed with Waring over other issues, agreed that GPS monitoring is needed. He said if authorities were to monitor sex offenders at all, it might as well be done using GPS.
“In one perspective, GPS monitoring is a better tool than just plain monitoring,” he said.
Garcia also suggested that sex offenders who are released on probation and who get the device pay for the cost rather than the state.
“If they want their freedom they should pay for it,” he said.
Another issue that is likely to come up during the hearing is the long-standing debate about the effectiveness of GPS monitoring in reducing recidivism.
Elizabeth Houde of the Arizona Sexual Assault Network said the focus of law enforcement should be Level 3 sex offenders, those determined to have the highest risk of re-offending.
“When you get below Level 3, you need to begin to look at each case individually,” she said. People tagged as sex offenders are not a homogenous group, she said.
In a report, the Arizona Sexual Assault Network said that “all evidence indicates that GPS tracking does not deter or prevent sex crimes.” The group cited research indicating that more than 90 percent of sex crimes against children are committed by people the victims know. But GPS legislation is generally designed to address situations in which the sex offender is presumed to be a stranger, the group said.
The group also pointed out that GPS monitoring can only tell probation officers where a person is located, “not what a person is doing.”
“Is GPS tracking necessary for high-risk offenders? Definitely yes,” the group said. “Is GPS tracking necessary and effective with the majority of the 90 to 96 percent of all sex offenders who are known to their victims? Probably not.”
The group had supported Waring’s vetoed bill.
“If the state-level legislative process demands the use of GPS on all level sex offenders, it is overburdening the parole officer… So instead of helping control released sex offenders, it is actually defeating the system,” the group said. ..more.. by Luige del Puerto
August 23, 2007
Attack of the Perv Trackers
11-9-2006
If the creepy guy next door suddenly stops wearing shorts, he may have an eye in the sky to blame.
Just a few years ago, satellite tracking of convicts was a newfangled alternative to house arrest. Now, the number of American ex-offenders tracked through GPS-equipped ankle bracelets will likely triple to more than 30,000, thanks to the passage of a California ballot measure.
California's Proposition 83, which easily passed Tuesday by a margin of 70 percent to 30 percent, requires many convicted sex offenders to be monitored by GPS for life. Only those who committed felonies and served time in prison will be affected.
(On Wednesday, a judge ruled (.pdf) that portions of the ballot measure are probably unconstitutional. The objections revolve around provisions that retroactively set new rules about where prior offenders may live. The electronic monitoring requirements were not immediately challenged, and remain untouched by the court's decision.)
At least 11 other states have recently considered GPS tracking legislation, with some inspired by the 2005 murder of a Florida girl, allegedly by a registered sex offender. Florida's high-profile legislation was named "Jessica's Law" in her honor, and talk-show host Bill O'Reilly has been pushing for passage of similar laws elsewhere.
But there's a hitch: The ankle bracelets -- usually accompanied by digital-pager-size transmitters -- are hardly criminal-proof. Convicts can easily cut the bracelets off and run away as their probation officer gets an alarm and tries to contact the local police. For health reasons, the bracelets aren't designed to be permanent.
"GPS will not prevent a crime," said Steve Chapin, CEO of Pro Tech Monitoring, a manufacturer of GPS tracking devices. "It's a crime deterrent. It has proven to be a good tool, but you can't oversell it -- there's no physical barrier that it creates that can prevent a crime."
Chapin said his Florida-based company tracks about 10,000 people, and he thinks other companies track a few thousand more. Offenders wear an ankle bracelet -- Chapin said it can be hidden under a sock -- and keep the transmitter nearby.
There are an estimated 63,000 to 90,000 sex offenders convicted of felonies and misdemeanors in California. According to Chapin, it's possible that about 20,000 of them will need GPS monitoring under the new law.
Chapin expects the state to adopt "active" monitoring, which tracks offenders in real time and sends out alerts if they go somewhere they're not supposed to, such as a school. The alternative is "passive" tracking, which produces reports about where offenders have been, not where they are right now.
Currently, Pro Tech charges $6 to $8 a day for active monitoring, and $4 to $5 a day for passive monitoring, equipment included. At that rate, California can expect to fork out between $80,000 and $160,000 per day to watch its sex offenders, although the ballot measure allows increases in court fees and other costs that offenders are billed.
GPS tracking technology allows users to create "geofences" to mark forbidden "hot zones." The monitoring systems can even be programmed so that alarms only go off if an offender spends a certain amount of time in an outlawed area instead of, say, simply driving through it at high speed on the way to somewhere else.
GPS tracking has its critics. The American Civil Liberties Union has been skeptical, although at times intrigued by an alternative to incarceration.
Donald Smith, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Virginia, said it's wrong to rely on technology instead of teaching children to be cautious. "People would like alarms to go off when pedophiles go near their children," he said. "The real problem is that the pedophile is likely to be their brother, their uncle, their cousin."
On the other hand, a new study of more than 75,000 Florida convicts found that both GPS monitoring and old-fashioned, house-arrest electronic monitoring (the kind Martha Stewart endured) made convicts more likely to toe the line.
"Our conclusion is that it does help protect public safety, that these offenders are less likely to get in trouble," said study co-author Kathy Padgett of Florida State University.
GPS technology is "pretty reliable," but conventional devices often don't allow tracking inside buildings, said Richard Langley, a professor who studies GPS tracking at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.
Conceivably, sex offenders could head to an indoor shopping mall and get into trouble without anyone knowing exactly where they are. But cell phones may help triangulate people's positions inside buildings, even to specific floors, and Pro Tech's Chapin predicted that his company's GPS devices will eventually allow tracking in buildings. For now, though, his goal is to make a "smaller, cheaper, lighter product."
Another company has created an all-in-one GPS tracking device that doesn't require a separate bracelet and transmitter, although it's bulky. And then there's an approach that's positively Maxwell Smart-ian: At least one model is equipped with a speakerphone, allowing overseers to contact offenders via their ankles. ..more.. by Randy Dotinga
