11-2-2009 National:
Sowell Was Last Visited By Police About One Month Ago
Registered sex offender Anthony Sowell was able to hide six decomposed bodies in his Cleveland home from officials who routinely checked in on him has called into question the effectiveness of the probation and parole system.
There are too few officers checking on a growing registry of sex offenders that often tops 100 for each officer to keep an eye on, at times giving the same level of scrutiny to offenders who had one-time flings with a minor to dangerous predators. "The system is broken in the sense that we have a lot of people on sex registries and while it gives us a list of people who might be involved in crimes, there are so many people on those lists that they're overly inclusive," said Jonathan Simon, the associate dean for Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley's School of Law. "[These lists] don't give authorities the chance to select those who are the higher risks," said Simon.
Sowell, 50, was last visited by officials on Sept. 22, more than a month before it was discovered that there were six women dead in the home, five of whom are believed to have been strangled.
Investigators said some of the bodies had been in Sowell's home for months, possibly years. Sheriffs deputies say they were not allowed to go into Sowell's home on their routine house checks because Sowell, who spent 15 years in prison for choking and raping a 21-year-old woman in 1989, was not on probation or parole.
Sowell's house was only entered by authorities after a woman in the neighborhood reported having been raped inside the home, giving police reasons for a search warrant.
In September, California Inspector General David Shaw launched an investigation into how several different state parole officers failed to discover that accused kidnapper Phillip Garrido was able to keep Jaycee Dugard hidden for 18 years. Dugard was discovered in Garrido's Antioch, Calif., yard in August.
Shaw told ABCNews.com at the time that Garrido, 58, had five or six different state parole officers assigned to check up on him over the nearly two decades he held Dugard in his back yard.
The officers checking on Garrido at any one time had a case load that included at least 39 other offenders, according to public records.
Steve Austin, a correctional program specialist at the National Institute of Corrections, told ABCNews.com that these two cases highlight the problems that exist in the parole and probation system.
"A lot of times the resources are so limited that the parole agencies aren't doing the kind of checks that the public might think they are," said Austin. "These parole officers have such large caseloads they aren't able to do intricate checks of these offenders' homes."
Anthony Sowell Case Highlights Problems With Sex Offender Registries
In Garrido's case, officers were called to the home in 2006 when neighbors complained that there might be people living in the backyard. Officers reportedly met with Garrido in his front yard and determined everything was fine, a conclusion that the Contra Costa sheriff's office later took responsibility for.
Austin said that parole officers simply knocking on the doors of offenders and moving on to the next name on their list is not unusual.
Jonathan Simon, the associate dean for Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley's School of Law, said that the long lists sex offenders like Garrido and Sowell are put on are often ineffective in preventing future crimes from being committed.
"The system is broken in the sense that we have a lot of people on sex registries and while it gives us a list of people who might be involved in crimes, there are so many people on those lists that they're overly inclusive," said Simon. "[These lists] don't give authorities the chance to select those who are the higher risks," said Simon.
When 7-year-old Somer Thompson disappeared in northern Florida last month and was found days later in a Georgia landfill, police fanned out to interview the registered sex offenders in the area. There were 150 registered sex offenders within a nine mile radius of Somer's house.
Simon said another problem with the system is that many officers who follow offenders for years tend to get lax in their surveillance after making house calls for years.
"How do you spot [a criminal] and whose behavior on the surface doesn't put them far outside the norm in their community?" said Simon. ..Source.. by EMILY FRIEDMAN
November 2, 2009
Anthony Sowell and Phillip Garrido Cases Raise Questions About Sex Offender Monitoring
October 8, 2009
NY- Court Finds Offenders Can Be Subject to Voice Analysis to Detect Lies
10-8-2009 New York:
Sex offenders can be required to submit to computerized voice stress analysis as part of their post-release supervision to determine if they are telling the truth, a federal court has ruled.
Northern District of New York Chief Judge Norman A. Mordue ruled that the technique is analogous to polygraph examinations, which have been accepted by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a way to monitor the activities of those under post-release supervision.
The 2nd Circuit in United States v. Johnson, 446 F.2d 272 (2006), held that polygraphs were not unreliable, that they could be validly related to the post-release supervision of an offender and that they did not deprive a defendant of his rights under the Fifth Amendment. The same qualities apply to the voice analysis devices, Judge Mordue determined.
Judge Mordue, ruling from Syracuse, N.Y., in Gjurovich v. United States, 5:01-cr-215, conceded that federal authorities have acknowledged that a "number of sources" have questioned whether computerized voice analysis is reliable.
"However, as noted by the 2nd Circuit in Johnson, when confronted with the same arguments about polygraph testing, the reliability of the technology and its admissibility as evidence 'does not bear much on the therapeutic value of the tool,'" Judge Mordue wrote. "Petitioner argues that the use of the CVSA [computerized voice stress analysis] is not reasonably related to the purposes of sentencing. The Court disagrees based on 'the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant.'"
Advocates of voice stress analysis technology say the devices can detect otherwise inaudible voice inflections in responses to questions that can indicate whether a speaker is being truthful.
Testimony before Judge Mordue indicated that some 1,800 law enforcement agencies in the United States have the devices available. Most have been manufactured by the National Institute of Truth Verification, or NITV, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based company that has been producing the devices since 1997.
Judge Mordue declined to revoke the terms of Ethan J. Gjurovich's supervised release from federal prison that the U.S. Probation Office sought following Gjurovich's completion of a five year, 10-month sentence for transporting child pornography and possessing child pornography in 2007.
The term also included a three-year period of supervised release.
The supervision period had required that Gjurovich submit to regular polygraph exams about his activities in the community. In August 2008, the Probation Office of the Northern District of New York sought to modify the terms of his supervision to add the requirement that he also submit to CVSA exams if asked.
Officials also requested that Gjurovich be required to participate in a treatment program for sexual disorders.
According to Judge Mordue's ruling, officials had become concerned about several aspects of Gjurovich's behavior, including the apparent tampering in April 2007 with software designed to monitor his online activities, his contact with another convicted sex offender and, in May 2007, his use of cocaine.
'CONTAINMENT APPROACH'
Gjurovich was sent back to a federal halfway house in 2008 because of his violations.
Probation Officer Edward Cardinal contended in an affidavit in the case before Judge Mordue that Gjurovich qualified for the "containment approach" used by federal officers to monitor sex offenders. That approach includes treatment, direct supervision and monitoring by parole officers and the use of "truth verification" instruments such as polygraphs.
Judge Mordue wrote that, according to Cardinal, officers believe there is a "dampening effect" involved when offenders are exposed to repeated polygraph exams. That can allow offenders to reduce their physiological reaction to the test and render it ineffective.
Cardinal argued that the computerized voice stress analysis, while not used solely to verify offenders' violations, can be effective as part of a "supervision strategy for further investigations and deterrence" of proscribed activities.
Paul Evangelista, the assistant federal public defender who represented Gjurovich, argued that the scientific evidence so far is "dubious" about the merits of voice testing. He said a U.S. Justice Department study on the voice analysis has shown that people may be more inclined to tell the truth because, knowing there is a machine evaluating their words, they may be exposed if they are lying.
"I think what the court accepted is the idea that if you tell someone it could work, then it encourages them to tell the truth," Evangelista said Wednesday. "We have the lie-detecting dog. If you don't tell the truth, he's going to bite you."
Evangelista said in his research of the case that he could not find another federal court that has ruled on the value of imposing a computerized voice stress analysis requirement on a parolee.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Spina Jr. argued on behalf of the prosecutor. Spina did not return a call for comment Wednesday. ..Source.. by Joel Stashenko, New York Law Journal
September 6, 2009
NV- NEVADA PAROLE OFFICERS: Sex offenders get more scrutiny
Oh yes, don't forget to check for HIDDEN SPACES in the WALLS to...
9-6-2009 Nevada:
Governor says system's failure in California provides lesson
CARSON CITY -- Parole officers in Nevada these days are taking more time to check out the backyards of the sex offenders they supervise.
Gov. Jim Gibbons said the abject failure of the parole system in California to find kidnapped and imprisoned Jaycee Lee Dugard for 18 years provides a lesson from which all parole officers can learn.
Gibbons said he wants to assure people 'that our officers are checking things they may have bypassed in the past."
Mark Woods, deputy director of the state Division of Parole and Probation, said his officers always have closely checked residences of sex offenders. Now they are being more thorough, even viewing satellite images of sex offenders' residences on the Google Earth Web site.
A backyard shed and tents at Phillip Garrido's Antioch, Calif., home is where the convicted sex offender is alleged to have imprisoned Jaycee and two girls he is believed to have fathered. Google Earth images showed the shed and tents, although the parole officers who regularly visited the 58-year-old's home never found the girls.
Neighbors even had called local police and told them Garrido, a former Reno resident who did time in a Nevada prison, was a pervert who had children playing in his backyard.
Though officials are promising vigilance, the Nevada Division of Parole and Probation has not always been up to its task. A legislative audit released in March 2008 found parole officers 31 percent of the time failed to meet the twice-monthly requirement of visiting with sex offenders.
In about half the cases, officers were not taking DNA samples from sex offenders as the law required. In some cases, their initial visits were made six months after offenders were released from prison.
John Gonska, then parole and probation director, told legislators he had been prevented from filling 50 parole officer vacancies because of a hiring freeze ordered by Gibbons. His 198 officers were supposed to supervise 18,000 parolees. He resigned shortly after release of the audit, which concluded "public safety is at risk" because parolees were not properly supervised.
Those problems have been fixed, Woods said.
There are now 263 officers on the job and 18 vacancies will be filled if needed in coming months.
Woods added that the agency now meets the requirement of having one parole officer supervising no more than 45 sex offenders.
Nevada parole officers now work in two-member teams when they visit the residences of the 1,117 sex offenders they supervise, Woods said. Most paroled sex offenders live in apartments, he added, but some live on rural ranches.
Working in pairs is safer for the officers, and the extra pair of eyes is helpful, he added.
But sometimes all the due diligence in the world isn't going to stop a sex offender or any other determined parolee from committing new crimes, he said.
Woods remembers when he was a young parole officer visiting a drug offender's home in Sparks.
"I had been there many times," he said. "One day I felt the floor move. I pulled back the rug and there was a trap door where he had dug out a basement. He hid his drugs there. It was sheer luck that I found it."
NO GUARANTEES
Gibbons concedes he cannot guarantee a Jaycee Dugard case won't happen here.
"Even if there was one parole officer assigned to one sex offender, you can't guarantee nothing bad ever will happen," Gibbons said.
But he wants Nevada to gain a reputation as a living hell for sex offenders.
The Dugard case is one of the reasons the governor said he will back legislation, if he wins re-election, to increase sentences for sex offenders and toughen release requirements to ensure they're properly supervised.
"They are going to feel if they are living in Nevada they might as well be living in jail," Gibbons said.
Garrido had been convicted in 1977 for kidnapping and sexually assaulting Katherine Callaway, then 25. She had given him a ride outside a South Lake Tahoe, Calif., market after he said his car broke down.
After conning Callaway into giving him a ride, Garrido handcuffed her and drove to a mini-warehouse in Reno where he had set up a virtual sex den, complete with pornographic magazines and a film projector.
A police officer, checking an open door at the warehouse, caught and arrested him.
At his federal proceedings, Garrido contended he lost his reasoning when under the influence of LSD. He said he would drive through Reno neighborhoods and past schools looking for young girls. He said he would expose himself.
Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison on interstate kidnapping and sexual assault charges.
He served 11 years in federal prison before he won parole and was returned to Nevada to serve his state sentence of five years to life, which was running concurrently to his federal sentence, on charges relating to the same crime.
Because the sentences ran concurrently, he immediately was eligible for parole in Nevada. He served seven months before he was released from a Nevada prison into federal parole supervision.
At the time, state Parole Commission members rated him as a "moderate" risk to re-offend. Garrido then moved to Antioch, east of San Francisco, where his mother lived.
Callaway, now Katherine Hall and living in Las Vegas, told CNN's Larry King in an interview that she moved to Las Vegas because she feared Garrido would find her, even though she was never certain he was a free man. She said she thought she once saw him come into Caesars Tahoe, where she was working.
An Associated Press report Friday said he also had been arrested in 1972 on suspicion of drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl in Antioch. The girl refused to testify.
Though Woods won't fault his counterparts in California, he can't understand why Dugard was not found for 18 years. Jaycee was 11 when she was kidnapped in 1991 from a school bus stop in South Lake Tahoe.
Daniel Burns, Gibbons' communications director, said there is "no way" the state Parole Commission today would release a sex offender like Garrido after he served just seven months. Better assessment procedures and truth-in-sentencing laws that have recently been enacted would have prevented such a scenario.
TRACKING OFFENDERS
Today there are 14,040 sex offenders living in Nevada, including 1,660 whose whereabouts are unknown to police, according to the state Department of Public Safety. They have not obeyed requirements to register and give their addresses, Woods said. But he stressed those offenders are not required to be supervised by parole officers.
Of the total, 205 have been rated as "Tier 3" offenders, or those with a high risk of reoffending.
Woods said his agency tracks all 1,117 sex offenders who must submit to supervision as part of their sentences.
Most of the other 13,000 are those who have completed all provisions of their sentences, or are not required to be supervised.
With the exception of a few cases, Woods said his division knows where every sex offender parolee requiring supervision is living.
Nonetheless, according to state statistics, 89 sex offenders have given false information about their addresses or places of business, and 453 simply never registered when they left prison or moved to Nevada. Again, according to Woods, these are offenders who are not required to be supervised by parole officers.
Woods said his agency is notified in advance when a sex offender from another state who requires supervision is scheduled to move to Nevada.
If the offender doesn't show up at the agreed time, officials begin looking for him.
Woods said he realizes some sex offenders are very sophisticated and look for ways to repeat their crimes and to avoid detection.
That requires officers to be vigilant.
"Having worked the streets for many years, I know we do a pretty thorough job," Woods said. "I feel confident." ..Source.. by LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
