Sacramento Bee - 1/13/09
SACRAMENTO, CA -
Corrections officials say they've fitted every sex offender on state
parole in California who falls under the provisions of Jessica's Law
with a Global Positioning Satellite monitoring device to track his or
her movements.
There are 6,622 sex offenders now wearing the GPS ankle bracelet. The device transmits its location to parole agents.
One
of the mandates of Jessica's Law (Proposition 83) which California
voters approved in 2006, was to use GPS to monitor all sex offenders on
state parole.
"If an individual gets into an area that's near
a park or near a school as it's zoned on the map we're using to
monitor, then an alert is set out to the parole agent, and they
immediately follow up with the parolee and check out why that might be
the case," said Gordon Hinkle, a corrections department spokesman.
According to corrections officials, 11 percent of the sex offender population in California is now wearing the devices.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it achieved the GPS mandate six months ahead of schedule.
At
Southside Park in Sacramento, parent Kim Larson applauded the effort.
"I want to know who's around my daughter or who might be a jeopardy to
anybody's kids," she said.
When State Tracking Ends . . .
While Jessica's Law requires the GPS monitoring of sex offenders for
life, the corrections department tracks parolees for three years.
Afterward, it is the responsibility of local law enforcement to monitor
sex offenders, but many are not equipped to do so.
In fact,
CDCR confirmed that since Jessica's Law went into effect, 1,897
offenders have gone off parole with their state GPS monitors taken off.
"Once they're off parole, they're out of our jurisdiction," said CDCR
spokesman Seth Unger.
One criminal defense lawyer who
represents sex offenders said it's another example of how the law is
"overkill," with more than $100 million spent so far on the GPS
monitoring. "In all reality there's probably a very small percentage of
those guys you have to be worried about," said attorney Mike Chastaine.
"The
Department of Justice's own studies have shown guys who go through
treatment, 3.5 percent of those guys re-offend, which is far lower than
burglars, drug offenses, pretty much any other offense." "They've
committed a crime. I don't have an issue with them going to prison or
being punished for it. But they've done their time," said Chastaine.
"What I would hope we'd want is for them to become a productive member
of the community. Instead of being a drag on the society, let's get
them out there working and paying taxes like the rest of us. Instead,
we really throw up every roadblock."
Jessica's Law is not
retroactive, so the vast majority of convicted sex offenders in
California, about 90,000 of them, will not be subject to GPS monitoring
or restrictions on where they live unless they commit another crime.