Cordray Announces New Efforts to Track Sex Offenders

First notice the micro management of the lives of registrants. i.e. e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Of course this new system of tracking likely will catch offenders unaware and maybe arrested, when they are actually compliant. For instance, if a phone is shut off because one cannot pay a bill, that would cause the registrant to be arrested. Next, if the registrant doesn't use his/her e-mail addresses frequently, the e-mail provider will tag them for being dormant and eventually close the e-mail address, causing the registrant to be arrested. Next, if a registrant has many e-mail addresses each for different purposes, will s/he be arrested because he decides to no longer use one of them? There is a big difference in having a e-mail address and using it, this new system forces registrants to use ALL e-mail addresses regularly or face arrest. Insanity in law!

8-30-2010 Ohio:

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray announced today that his office has received a federal grant that will help county sheriffs keep better track of registered sex offenders.

The $155,546 grant will pay for two new programs.

The first will allow the Attorney General’s Office to develop a phone and e-mail alert system that will send automated messages to offenders and sheriffs’ offices around Ohio, five days before offenders are supposed to re-register as part of their reporting requirements. The system also will track phone numbers or e-mail addresses that no longer are in operation, alerting sheriffs’ offices if the contact information provided by offenders is incorrect.

“This automated system will ensure that offenders know when they must register and will help county sheriffs’ offices make sure that those offenders comply with those requirements,” Cordray said.

“Monitoring registered sex offenders is a difficult task for sheriffs’ offices, especially those that have had to make staffing cutbacks," said Coshocton County Sheriff Timothy Rogers, president of the Buckeye State Sheriffs Association. "This new callback system will help our sheriffs better keep track of offenders, especially those who do not comply with their registration requirements, and we thank Attorney General Cordray for his support.”

The second part of the grant will help county sheriffs’ offices fund extradition of offenders who moved to other states without notifying local authorities as required by law.

The grant will fund extradition of up to 50 of the most serious sex offenders, which will allow them to be prosecuted in state courts.

Why are local courts wanting to prosecute these cases, when the offense is a federal offense? AWA has a built-in jurisdictional hook to make this circumstance a federal offense. Should anyone see why a local prosecutor would want to prosecute these cases rather than allowing federal courts to do so, please send me a e-mail. eAdvocate

“Too often noncompliant offenders avoid prosecution simply because smaller counties cannot afford the overtime and travel expenses needed to pick them up. This grant will help address this problem.” Cordray said.

The grant money was awarded by the federal Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking and the Adam Walsh Act Implementation Grant Program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs.

In 2009, Ohio became the first state in the nation to reach substantial implementation of the federal Adam Walsh Act. ..Source.. Ohio Attorney General's Office

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Tracking sex-crime offenders gets trickier

The examples show here are not typical of the entire class even though the Journalist would have us to believe.

11-23-2009 National:

The pursuit of Lee Shelton began the moment the convicted sex offender was released from prison.

It ended months later with a U.S. Marshals Service helicopter hovering near a D.C. junior high school as Shelton kissed a 14-year-old boy. In between, authorities used two Global Positioning System devices to help track him, learned he was online at the library and seized a secret laptop with a power source in the trunk of his car. His parole was revoked, and he is back in jail.

Shelton, who originally was convicted of molesting boys at the National Air and Space Museum and on the grounds of the Washington Monument, is one of thousands of sex offenders accused of similar crimes after their release from prison or while on probation. His parole violation illustrates the challenges of monitoring hundreds of thousands of offenders.

The nationwide crackdown on child pornography and other sex offenses has created severe manpower shortages and technology challenges for probation officers, police and federal agents struggling to track offenders who are jumping online with cellphones and portable game systems and flocking to social networking and other sites, where children or pornography can easily be found.

There are more than 716,000 registered sex offenders nationwide, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a 78 percent increase since 2001, and that does not include all offenders because some crimes do not require registration. Sex-offender registries have grown even faster in the Washington area, with more than 24,000 people listed. Not all receive the scrutiny given to such offenders as Shelton.

716,000 really? Funny, the chart at NCMEC shows 686,515 (11-23-09). I guess a little sensationalizing is OK..

The focus on crimes against children that began in the Bush administration shows no sign of abating under President Obama. Federal child sexual exploitation prosecutions are up 147 percent since 2002, and the Justice Department is hiring 81 more prosecutors for these cases. Funding for task forces that bring charges in state courts rose this year from $16 million to $75 million.

But many of those offenders are now leaving prison, even as revenue-strapped states are cutting the budgets of probation departments. In Virginia, probation and parole cuts this year totaled nearly $10 million, including $500,000 for electronic monitoring of sexually violent predators. Maryland also has cut its budget.

"The burden on probation and parole officers is going to explode," said Ernie Allen, the national center's president.

The monitoring of virtually all sex offenders is required by law when they are on probation or parole.

The problem has gained national attention with the discovery of 10 bodies and a skull at a registered sex offender's home in Cleveland and revelations that Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped at age 11 in 1991 and allegedly held captive at a California sex offender's house until her reappearance in August. Officers had visited both homes and noticed nothing wrong.

Those cases underscore a troubled registry system that has been the public face of sex-offender monitoring. An estimated 100,000 offenders do not comply with registration requirements. Law enforcement doesn't know where many of them are.

But the most alarming development for officers is proliferating electronic gadgets and the temptations they pose to sex offenders. A man on probation in Iowa for molesting a 9-year-old girl, for example, was recently caught downloading pornographic images of a young girl on his PlayStation Portable -- while walking to his probation appointment.

Sometimes, offenders cannot be monitored even while in custody. David L. Franklin, a church deacon, pleaded guilty in federal court to sending child pornography to an undercover D.C. police detective. While awaiting sentencing, Franklin struck up another online conversation with the same detective, who traced the defendant to an unusual address -- the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility.

was on his bunk, online, when guards grabbed it, sources familiar with the case said. He was sentenced last month to 135 months in prison. Franklin's attorney, Dani Jahn, declined to comment.

"When a sex offender has access to hundreds of tools, how we can possibly keep up with this explosion is beyond me," said Leonard Sipes, spokesman for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency in the District, which helped capture Shelton and supervises about 650 other sex offenders convicted in D.C. Superior Court. An attorney for Shelton could not be located.

Sipes said officers are especially worried about social networking sites frequented by children, such as MySpace, which this year said it banned 90,000 registered sex offenders. Facebook has said it is also actively trying to prevent sex offenders from joining its site.

One example: A Virginia man on probation in the District for having sex with a 16-year-old girl as two younger girls watched told officers that he kissed a 15-year-old female runaway he had picked up. Because he was prohibited from contact with minors, authorities searched his computer, which revealed that he was chatting extensively with teen girls on MySpace and stalking a 17-year-old girl in person, law enforcement officials said. His probation was revoked.

Probation and parole officers use GPS devices, polygraph tests, home visits and treatment to track sex offenders, but those tools can be used only during periods of supervision, which often end after three to five years. Parole is post-prison, while probation is generally a sentence in lieu of prison, but the terms are often used interchangeably.

The newest trend in sex-offender management is computer monitoring, which experts said is being done by a majority of state agencies. Maryland began using monitoring software for sex offenders last month; Virginia is researching it. Most federal districts monitor computers in some form.

A monitoring program installed on an offender's computer is designed to capture every keystroke, Internet site and program, including chat and e-mail. Officials can monitor the computer remotely by logging onto a Web site or getting an e-mail if the offender does anything troublesome.

"Anything they shouldn't be doing is going to leap off the page at you," said Jim Tanner, a former probation officer in Colorado and a leading proponent of monitoring. Violations are punished with warnings, harsher parole or probation conditions, parole or probation revocation or new charges if the action constitutes a crime.

Yet even this new tool is flawed. The software won't stop an offender from sneaking a laptop, using a family member's computer or logging on at the library. There is virtually no monitoring equipment for cellphones, BlackBerries or children's gaming devices, which require a time-consuming and expensive forensic analysis.

The monitoring equipment is expensive, so many agencies can't afford it or use a free program that can't retrieve deleted files.

Despite the limitations, proponents say computer monitoring is catching increasing numbers of violations and new crimes. But in the cat-and-mouse game officers play with offenders, old-fashioned police work often wins out.

D.C. probation officers learned, by questioning a man on probation for trying to rape a 9-year-old boy, that he was viewing child pornography on the computer at his mother's home, court records said. Federal agents and police searched his home.

An analysis showed the man, John Anthony, had deleted nearly 3,000 files of what the government called "sadistic and masochistic" child pornography up to an hour before the search, and officials said he was chatting on Yahoo as agents entered the house. Anthony pleaded guilty in D.C. federal court to possessing child pornography and was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison.

Aprille Cole, a nine-year veteran of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, relies on home visits, hard work and instinct in tracking sex offenders. "They're very smart and manipulative," said Cole. "We get to know their family members, friends and co-workers. We know their girlfriends and whether they have children."

On a recent visit to the Southeast D.C. apartment of a man on parole for molesting his 10-year-old daughter, Cole began firing questions the moment she and her partner, Kevin Jones, walked through the door.

"What's in that box?" she asked as she looked in the closet.

"Who is Sean?" she said as she spotted an unfamiliar name on the kitchen calendar.

"What's up with your girlfriend?"

"I'm not into girlfriends right now," the man answered.

"Then why is there a ponytail holder in your bathroom?" Cole said.

"I know he's lying about the girlfriend," she later told a reporter.

Officers would not disclose the man's name, citing privacy laws. He is not on computer monitoring because he says he doesn't have a computer.

In the man's bedroom, more than 30 stuffed animals were lined up on a table, including an oversize Elmo doll.

He said they belong to a former girlfriend. ..Source.. Jerry Markon, Washington Post Staff Writer

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Barnidge: Dugard case pinpoints need for better communication among law enforcement agencies

Just so folks know a commentary is coming on this article on Sunday afternoon. Why? Because I disagree with the journalist who generally is super on his facts, but this time I disagree. Stop back for my thoughts....

9-6-2009 California:

THE SORDID TALE of Jaycee Dugard's kidnapping, rape and imprisonment for 18 years is the story that launched a thousand newscasts. Less than two weeks after the news first broke, disbelief continues to mingle with outrage.

As one lurid aspect of the case piled atop another and the profile of suspect Phillip Garrido unfolded, you could feel the emotional temperature of the community rising to a full boil. And because public fervor and knee-jerk reaction often are catalysts for new legislation, it's a safe bet that some legislator already is contemplating a bill that addresses the horrors exposed in the case.

It was a similar case, the rape and murder of 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994, that precipitated Megan's Law, which gave the public access to information on registered sex offenders.

The rape and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005 led to the enactment of Jessica's Law, which in California requires newly registered sex offenders to wear GPS tracking devices and prohibits them from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks.

The kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas by career felon Richard Allen Davis in 1993 provided the impetus for California's adoption of the Three Strikes Law.

So what comes next? Do we need Jaycee's Law?

"No," said U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, as quickly as the question was posed. "I'm comfortable with the laws and sentencing we have in place. We don't need any knee-jerk legislation."

He doesn't have to look far for supporting views.

"I'm not a fan of more legislation in the criminal law area," said Professor Rory Little of UC Berkeley's Hastings College of the Law. "To me, this case looks like two things: a failure of investigation and failure of detection.

"A guy kidnapped a girl, and nobody caught him. And he hid her in his backyard for years, and nobody caught him. My guess is that a lot of people saw something odd was happening and didn't pursue government intervention. You can't legislate that."

New legislation often serves as a convenient salve for the sudden revelation of heinous crimes. If the old law has a loophole, write a new law to close it. And another after that, if needed. Politicians raise their hands and constituents applaud, but solutions seldom come that easily.

Suzanne Brown-McBride, executive director of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, explains that no law is perfect.

"When you look at the Dugard case, neither GPS tracking nor residency restrictions would have made any level of difference," she said. "Garrido was on GPS, and he didn't violate — he was at home where he theoretically was supposed to be. And he wasn't subject to residency laws. But even if he had been, his property was compliant with the requirements."

Some legislation actually results in as many negatives as positives.

GPS tracking and residency restrictions have not necessarily increased community safety, Brown-McBride said.

"For instance, the number of transient offenders — those who are registered in the system but homeless — has gone up over a hundredfold. And the information we've gotten from GPS has come at the cost of massive investment. ... to track the 6,000 or 7,000 people in California ... costs $65 million a year."

More important than new legislation, she said, is better communication and collaboration among law enforcement agencies. In other words, when a Contra Costa County sheriff's deputy was called to Garrido's house in 2006 to investigate a neighbor's complaint, he should have known beforehand that Garrido was a registered sex offender.

Another crying need, Brown-McBride said, is a means of categorizing sex offenders. Some are more dangerous, and they should be tracked more closely. ("The high-risk offenders have a high propensity for repeat offenses," she said.) Public awareness can be far more effective than legislation.

"The problem," said Little, "is people see cases like this and instead of addressing the nuances of why this wasn't detected earlier, they want to write a law that hammers the criminal and anybody who possibly could be put in this category."

That shouldn't be a concern this time. If Garrido is found guilty, you can bet he'll get the biggest hammer the justice system can wield. ..Source.. by Tom Barnidge, Contra Costa Times columnist

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CA- Experts: Monitoring tools failed to unearth Garrido's secret

UPDATE: To clear up when state officials have a right to search a persons home, IF they are under state supervision. Local police, allowing for certain exceptions (ex: police can see someone is in immediate danger, etc.), will always need a properly issued search warrant. However, allowing for very narrow exceptions (ex: cannot search say, bedrooms of others who live in the same home of the person under supervision.), parole or probation officers ALWAYS have the right to search a parolees or probationers home (personal space) -without any court order-, that right stems from state supervision. There are many court decisions that have upheld these circumstances in every state.

9-2-2009 California:

(CNN) -- Phillip Garrido was registered as a sex offender, required to meet with parole officers and fitted with an ankle bracelet to track his movements -- but nothing prevented him from being around children, according to a victim's advocacy group.

Garrido, who is charged with kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard -- a young woman police say lived with her two daughters in a huddle of tents and outbuildings hidden behind Garrido's home - was arrested last week along with his wife Nancy. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Dugard grew up in the compound and raised the girls, now 11 and 15, that she bore and Garrido fathered, police said. Dugard was abducted in 1991 at age 11.

"Here we have a guy who is essentially under every kind of supervision we allow. Law enforcement had every tool available to them, and [the tools] failed," said Robert Coombs, spokesman for the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

Garrido "was technically allowed to be around minors," Coombs said, because his parole stemmed from the November 1976 rape of Katie Callaway Hall, who was 25 at the time of the assault.

He was sentenced in 1977 to 50 years at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, for kidnapping because he abducted Hall in California and transported her across the state line to Reno, Nevada, where he raped her in a warehouse, according to court documents. A Nevada court separately sentenced him to five years to life for the rape conviction, the Reno-Gazette Journal reported.

While in prison in 1978, Garrido sent a handwritten letter to Judge Bruce R. Thompson, saying he was recovering from seven years of LSD use and progressing well.

"I am so ashamed of my past. But my future is now in controle [sic]," he wrote.

Court documents show Garrido requested that his 50-year sentence be reduced to 25, making him eligible for parole in eight years, "where he could be released to the state of Nevada as an educated person and being a rehabilitated person."

According to a 1978 court transcript, attorney Willard Van Hazel Jr. told a judge, "Without the influence of any of this drug involvement, I think Mr. Garrido would pause before carrying out sexual fantasies."

After more than a decade at Leavenworth, Garrido received a federal parole but was sent to Carson City, Nevada, in January 1988 to serve his rape sentence. However, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal, he was automatically eligible for state parole because of the time served in federal prison.

The Nevada Offender Tracking Information System indicates he went four times before the parole board, which granted his request in August 1988, about 11 years after he was incarcerated.

He moved to Antioch, California, where authorities said they learned Dugard, now 29, had been living in the backyard since her abduction.

"He served about 20 percent of his sentence, and it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out if he served only one-third of his sentence, Jaycee Dugard doesn't end up in the predicament that she's in," said Andy Kahan, crime victim's advocate in Houston, Texas.

Citing revised federal sentencing guidelines, Kahan and Illinois defense attorney Stephen Komie concur that this is not something that could happen today.

"If he got 50 years, say, he would have 600 months. He would only get 50 months off. He would do 550 months," Komie said. "So this would not be repeated in the federal system again."

Added Kahan, "You're going to have to do at least a minimum of half of your term without any good time credits before you can even see the light of day or say hello to a parole board member."

In 1993, five years after his release from a Nevada prison, Garrido was jailed on a parole violation, but it's unclear what that offense was. Tom Hutchinson, spokesman for the U.S. Parole Commission, said documents have been requested and should be available later this week.

Garrido was released later that year.

The California Coalition Against Sexual Assault's Coombs said Garrido was required to meet regularly with parole officers, who unearthed nothing about Dugard's abduction or Garrido's backyard secrets.

Another visit by law enforcement was the direct result of a 2006 call a neighbor made to 911, reporting that women and children were living in tents behind Garrido's house.

Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf said he didn't think the deputy knew Garrido was a sex offender at the time and spoke to Garrido in the home's front yard.

"We should have been more inquisitive, more curious and turned over a rock or two," the sheriff said. "We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation."

Kahan partially blames the economics of the criminal justice system - not just in California, but nationwide -- and said Garrido likely became less of a priority as the time since his crimes passed.

Despite the heinous nature of Garrido's 1976 crime, it paled to allegedly holding a young girl hostage and raping her for 18 years, Coombs said.

"Nothing in this guy's case history indicated he was capable of such evil, if you will," he said. "It was so far out of the picture, they didn't even look for it."

Rather than there not being enough money to fund the proper supervision of parolees, it's more a matter of priorities, Coombs said, citing the global-positioning system Garrido wore on his ankle.

Although CALCASA has no official tally, it estimates California spends roughly $500 million a year on GPS devices for 6,600 of the state's sex offenders. Garrido was fitted with a device after California voters passed Jessica's Law in November 2006.

Each dollar spent on GPS equipment "is one dollar you're not spending on real, traditional parole techniques, like talking to collateral contacts and neighbors," he said.

Had Garrido's parole officer spoken to the neighbor who made the 911 call in 2006, authorities might have found Dugard three years earlier, Coombs said.

"We know where this guy is, so we think we're safe," he said, "but the place where we knew he was was the place where he was offending. GPS just tells you where they are. It doesn't tell you what they're doing." ..Source.. by Eliott C. McLaughlin

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CA- Questions arise on monitoring of sex offenders

9-2-2009 California:

Every April 5 for the past 10 years, Phillip Garrido registered on his birthday with the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office as a convicted sex offender.

Two to three times a month, he met his parole officer at the parole office or his Antioch, Calif., home. Since at least January, the state monitored him with a global positioning device strapped to his ankle.

Yet police say he managed to conceal Jaycee Lee Dugard, whom he is accused of kidnapping and sexually abusing, in a squalid backyard encampment for 18 years.

The charges are causing authorities to rethink their procedures as they question how a registered sex offender could lead a secret life while under their supervision.

Some legal scholars and people who work with missing children say police are overwhelmed by the number of registered offenders they have to monitor. They say tough laws that require all sex offenders to register, no matter how small the offense, are counterproductive.

"It's causing the workload to be such that you can't keep up with the problem people," says Jeffery Walker, a criminal justice professor at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, who has studied sex offender laws. "The question is how do you separate those who do not appear to be a problem and those who are hiding something?"

There are more than 500,000 registered sex offenders nationwide, says Nancy Sabin, executive director of the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, named after an 11-year-old Minnesota boy who has been missing since 1989 when he was kidnapped at gunpoint. She says the registries should be used to monitor violent repeat adult offenders. It is unclear how many of those registered are considered violent repeat offenders.

Instead, Sabin says, states are requiring anyone convicted of a sex offense to register. She sees little value in registering "Romeo and Juliet" offenders, for example — 18-year-olds convicted of having sex with underage boyfriends or girlfriends a year or two younger.

In Garrido's case, a parole officer did not see the compound of sheds, tents and outhouses because they were hidden by a 6-foot-high fence, trees and debris that appeared to be at the end of the yard, says Gordon Hinkle, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Garrido came in contact with the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office in 2006, when a deputy responded to a neighbor's call that children were living in tents in the yard. The deputy didn't know Garrido was registered as a sex offender. He warned Garrido that the tents could be a code violation but didn't search the property, Sheriff Warren Rupf said.

Jimmy Lee, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, says the department is reviewing the deputy's actions and its system to avoid such mistakes.

He says, "All law enforcement agencies are asking themselves some real tough questions right now." ..Source.. by Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

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WA- Money for tracking offenders is well spent (in whos' opinion)

The real question the public should be asking is: Does all this tracking PREVENT further sex crimes? Today the Govenor is asking for an ADDITIONAL amount of money (a similar amount of money was appropriated last year as well) to continue TRACKING systems. Notice, not one word about whether the money spent last year prevented sex crimes. However, notice carefully, the comment "tracking system and public notification system improve public safety by helping people be informed so they can protect themselves and their family members, " so people can protect themselves.

Folks, if these tracking systems are working, then obviously you have not heard of a single sex crime in the past year? Right? Do I need to say more...this is happening in every state millions and maybe now up to billions are being spent with no proof that TRACKING prevents crime..

3-18-2009 Oregon:

Even in the face of an $8 billion, two-year state budget deficit, Gov. Chris Gregoire has continued to put millions of dollars into her budget request to keep track of sex offenders.

The Legislature must follow suit and spend $5 million because it is an investment in public safety.

The $5 million pays for law enforcement officers to verify the residency of all registered sex offenders in the state. It also pays for a computer tracking system that allows residents to learn which sex offenders live in their neighborhoods.

"It also allows residents to get a notification if a sex offender moves into their neighborhood," said Thurston County Sheriff Dan Kimball, a big supporter of the tracking system.

"Ours was one of the first three counties in the state to have this up and running," Kimball said. Thurston County receives about $150,000 a year from the state for the tracking system.

"We are facing some serious budget issues," Kimball said. "However, I've made a priority that registered sex offenders will be kept at the top of the list as far as we do, because even in tough budget times people expect us to look out for their safety. ... This is a top priority for me and we are going to continue to provide that service. People should not fear that because of that, we will not be checking up on sex offenders."

And there are many of them to keep tabs on. Thurston County has 680 registered sex offenders categorized as follows:

• Level 3 offenders: 51. These are considered at the greatest risk to reoffend.

• Level 2 offenders: 285. These are medium-risk offenders.

• Level 1 offenders: 309. These are considered a minimal risk.

• Thirty-five transients — those Level 1, 2 and 3 offenders who have no permanent address.

Kimball said that before the Legislature cracked down on sex offenders with legislation last year, tracking their whereabouts was a hit-and-miss proposition. Few law enforcement agencies had the financial resources to do a thorough job, he said.

That's why he commends the Legislature and governor for coming up with the money to pay for the tracking system.

Four times a year, Kimball's officers verify the address of Level 3 and Level 2 offenders. They do that by requiring the offenders to report in at Thurston County Fairgrounds and bring proof of residency with them.

March 9 was a reporting day and all but 10 of the offenders reported in. Kimball's officers immediately began to track the absent 10 and could arrest them for failing to report.

When the county first started forcing offenders to report in, about one-quarter of them didn't show up, Kimball said. Arrest warrants were issued, word got out in the offender community and that quickly brought the compliance levels into line, the sheriff said.

Once a year, Kimball's patrol deputies verify the address of every Level 1 sex offender with a personal visit to the offender's home. Some times it takes two or three trips by the deputy to catch the person at home for those face-to-face verifications. While it's not required by law, Thurston County deputies also do home visits to all Level 3 offenders once a year, Kimball said.

As for transients, they are required to report in to the sheriff's office once a week and explain their movements for the previous week. Those under the watchful eye of the state Department of Corrections wear GPS tracking devices.

While tracking the 35 transients is especially challenging, Kimball is convinced the sex offender tracking system as a whole improves public safety.

"It's a balancing act," he said. "We need to handle sex offender registrations responsibly. We don't want to instill unreasonable fears in people and at the same time we want to keep people informed."

The real value in the sex offender tracking system comes with the ability of citizens to know which of their neighbors are registered offenders. It's as simple as going to the sheriff's office's Web site (www.co.thurston.wa.us/sheriff), clicking on "Sex Offender Watch" and entering your address. The computer program will list registered offenders within a one-mile radius, provide the offenders' mug shots and detail the offenders' conviction records.

At the same Web site residents can register for e-mail alerts so they will be notified when a sex offender moves into their neighborhood.

"People often want guarantees. It's human nature," Kimball said. "There are no guarantees of safety, but I believe the (sex offender) tracking system and public notification system improve public safety by helping people be informed so they can protect themselves and their family members."

That's why the cash-strapped Legislature should continue this worthwhile public safety program and keep the governor's $5 million request in their final budget. ..Source.. by The Olympian

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