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Tracking Sex Offenders via GPS for Life
ecmcn writes "According to Yahoo! news, the governor of Florida just passed a bill that, along with increasing the jail time served for convicted sex offenders, requires them to be tracked for life via GPS. No technical details about the tracking, but it mentions "warning authorities when a sex offender is someplace he shouldn't be". Maybe they can get Google maps to add red zones around all of the restricted areas."
That they do that to the Florida spammers, there is a hell of a difference between a spammer and a sex offender.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Somebody needs a class in civics. The governor cannot pass a law. He can only sign it into law or veto it.
Alright! I know I'm in there! If I don't come out, I'll have to come in after me!
Recidivism is the word you are looking for. For some interesting info. on recidivism amongst sex offenders you can read many things. I found this to be interesting.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
You have to be kidding. People in the modern world tend to use and need a lot of things. Saying 'Don't tag people - tag things' is meaningless in reality. Using guns and bullets as an example probably appeals to a certain segment but change it to automobiles, books, clothes, etc. Now that is a slippery slope. Whereas monitoring people who are extremely likely to offend again in a likewhile manner makes all kinds of sense.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
> Maybe I'm just not realistic about this, but why are we ever
> allowing child predators to go free, ever?
Because there are enough people (those who aren't sex offenders) who can justify it to themselves that these molestors aren't doing much damage to kids in the end through numerous dodgy 'studies' that are mostly hypothesis and little fact.
I speak as someone who was molested at age 8 and 14. The man who did this to me did get jail time, but he spent less time incarcerated than I did with my life on hold just for the surgery time to repair the damage he did, let alone the remaining limitations on my sex life.
I can't say I felt a bad person when I was glad to hear he himself was brutally bashed after moving towns. Natural justice and all.
Also we don't need to even have a working prototype until at least 25 years from now...
RTFA.
From the article:
Not true. He was not "registered" at that address, he had moved w/out updating his location. Furthermore, he had the girl (alive) for awhile (I forget, days?) after he abducted her. I'd think a blinking "pervert" light 50 yards away from the missing girls address might be a major clue...
You've missed several aspects of the case, which this law specifically addresses. The perpetrator had not registered his new living location. The police visited the house where he was staying, and the other residents did not mention he was living/staying there. The first time the police visited the house, according to the currently theorized police timeline, Jessica was alive and in the house. By the second visit, she had been buried alive in the back yard. The law specifically addresses several issues here...in addition to the GPS tracking, it also criminalizes harboring sex offenders who are not registering their whereabouts. As it was, there were no charges to file against the other residents, even if they knew he was a sex offender on the run, knew a girl went missing a couple houses away, and didn't mention this to police. I'm not sure of their exact knowledge of the situation in this case.
These crimes will certainly still happen, and this one may not have been foiled, but the law is meant to strengthen existing laws to make such crimes by repeat offenders less likely. If the perpetrator had been GPS-tagged, he would have been less likely to move without registering his location, more likely to be found when he did move without registering his location, more likely to be quickly found when the girl disappeared, more likely to be shown on the evening news if he disabled the GPS tag when the girl disappeared, and so on. Not foolproof, but these things make such abductions by repeat offenders less likely.
The article states that this law is specifically talking about tracking adults convicted of molesting children under 11 years old.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Hrm, if you've slept with someone whose willfully deceived you about their age, you're hard to convinct (if it's reasonable.)
Actually that's not true. Statutory rape and associated sex crimes against minors are "strict liability" crimes, which means that your intent or other mitigating circumstances are irrelevant -- if you did it, that's enough to convict. Even if they had a fake ID showing they were the proper age, if the DA decides to bring the charge, then there really isn't any excuse that will work for you -- you have to give the jusy reasonable doubt as to whether or not you actually did the deed.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
Do you have a cite for that statistic? I could only find this:
but that only gives data for up to three years after. It doesn't say anything about recidivism after 3 years which may or may not be significant.
Many factors affect recidivism rates for violent criminals.
These include
age - older adults are at much less risk than younger ones,
what-have-you-got-to-lose, adults with families and stable jobs are at much less risk than others
rehabilitation opportunities - those who are taking rehab seriously are at a much lower risk than those who aren't or those who do not have the opportunity to be in a good rehab program.
Even absent the last two, a person who violently attacks someone and is locked up for at least 10 years and until age 40 will on average be at significantly lower risk by virtue of age alone.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
From the Center for Sex Offender Management http://www.csom.org/pubs/mythsfacts.html/ of the US DOJ:
Myth:
"Most sex offenders reoffend."
Fact:
Reconviction data suggest that this is not the case. Further, reoffense rates vary among different types of sex offenders and are related to specific characteristics of the offender and the offense.
Persons who commit sex offenses are not a homogeneous group, but instead fall into several different categories. As a result, research has identified significant differences in reoffense patterns from one category to another. Looking at reconviction rates alone, one large-scale analysis (Hanson and Bussiere, 1998) reported the following differences:
child molesters had a 13% reconviction rate for sexual offenses and a 37% reconviction rate for new, non-sex offenses over a five year period; and
rapists had a 19% reconviction rate for sexual offenses and a 46% reconviction rate for new, non-sexual offenses over a five year period.
Another study found reconviction rates for child molesters to be 20% and for rapists to be approximately 23% (Quinsey, Rice, and Harris, 1995).
Individual characteristics of the crimes further distinguish recidivism rates. For instance, victim gender and relation to the offender have been found to impact recidivism rates. In a 1995 study, researchers found that offenders who had extrafamilial female victims had a recidivism rate of 18% and those who had extrafamilial male victims recidivated at a rate of 35%. This same study found a recidivism rate for incest offenders to be approximately 9% (Quinsey, Rice, and Harris, 1995).
It is noteworthy that recidivism rates for sex offenders are lower than for the general criminal population. For example, one study of 108,580 non-sex criminals released from prisons in 11 states in 1983 found that nearly 63% were rearrested for a non-sexual felony or serious misdemeanor within three years of their release from incarceration; 47% were reconvicted; and 41% were ultimately returned to prison or jail (Bureau of Justice Statistics).
It is important to note that not all sex crimes are solved or result in arrest and only a fraction of sex offenses are reported to police. The reliance on measures of recidivism as reflected through official criminal justice system data (i.e., rearrest or reconviction rates) obviously omits offenses that are not cleared through an arrest (and thereby cannot be attributed to any individual offender) or those that are never reported to the police. For a variety of reasons, many victims of sexual assault are reluctant to invoke the criminal justice process and do not report their victimization to the police. For these reasons, relying on rearrest and reconviction data underestimates actual reoffense numbers.
Perhaps you will drop the tone when some nasty fuck persuades an eleven-year-old to accuse you falsly of molestation?
Personally, I rather like the idea of due process. You know, that little thing that secures our liberties.
even accusing someone of child molestation pretty much destroys their life anyway, so what's the difference?
Because the rate of recidivism for violent sex offenders is nearly 100%, which means that they will almost certainly rape or murder someone it the future.
You know I thought it was really high, too, but according to these myths and facts about sex offenders, the majority of sex offenders do NOT reoffend. Also, I was very surprised to read that sex offenders are less likely to reoffend than non-sex offenders.
On the flip side, there's this analysis of multiple studies which reports some pretty high recidivism rates for various types of sex offenders.. and really demonstrates how complicated it is when factoring in the type of crime, and especially the extreme underreporting of sex crimes. I suspect that the overall lower rate is probably because of the underreporting and the grouping of all sex crimes together.
But in any case, I don't think your "nearly 100%" number can be substantiated. The biggest numbers in the studies analyzed, showed 52% of child molesters facing rearrested (not necessarily convicted) within a 25 year period. Oh, and Exhibitionists had a very high recidivism rate (41%-71%).
As a side note, people who are released from prison early and wear tracking systems have been deemed safe enough to be released, and unlikely to reoffend -- otherwise they wouldn't have been released early. What they're talking about here, is using it for people who have already served out their entire sentences.
It's technically infesable and actually attaching a tracking device to a person, like a tagged animal, would involve so much legal fighting that it would probably end up in the US Supreme court.
You are misinformed. GPS tracking of offenders has been going on for years so it is not "technically infesable."
Companies like iSECURETrac, ADT, and ProTech have been doing it for years.
iSECURETrac has a cool demo (I think, anyway) that shows you what the system can actually do here.
And rather than oppose it, the courts have embraced GPS tracking...the judges welcome an alternative to overcrowding prisons for small-time crooks. And when we must release a sex offender back into society, we have a little something more than the sex offender registry which is not working.
tS
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
Sex Offenders are also tracked in Canada. Info about the National Sex Offender Registry Why the Ontario Sex Offender Registry was created
Sex Offenders are dispicable people. In my opinion, they should be castrated.
I found :
t m
http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/docs/sxoffend/page1.h
Long term study in Canda showed a recidivism rate of 42%. Interestingly the recidivism rates appear to actually be LOWER than for many other crimes.
I guess the parent is officially.. well..wrong.
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The article itself is short, take the 3 minutes to read it then open a real discussion.
Quack, quack.
When did you people abolish mens rea?
We haven't, for many crimes. But most people are suprised at how many crimes don't have an "intent" factor. Most infractions, like speeding on the highway, are "strict liability" crimes -- it doesn't matter why you did it, it only matters whether or not you did it. The "why" part might influence the sentence, but it doesn't influence the guilt phase.
Generally, strict criminal liability is limited to crimes where the penalties are fairly low, like the traffic crimes mentioned above. However, there are a select few serious crimes where strict liability is the rule -- as I noted, sex crimes against minors are strict liability. Basically, for these crimes, society has determine that the need to protect children outweighs the "needs" or "rights" of people to have sexual relations with children -- that, and society has also determined that the "deterrence" effect of "strict liability" is more important than the rights of those people on the fringes of these laws who may be operating without intent, but get caught anyway. You can argue whether it is the right balance to strike or not, but that's the way it is in every state.
As I noted, there really aren't that many strict liability crimes, other than sexual crimes against children -- but one serious crime, not related to kids or sex that is strict liability is the unlicensed possession of a machine gun...
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
Are you really that fucking stupid? The article specifically says that the law only applies to people who molest children 11 or younger.
Your comment brings up an interesting point. Let's just say sex offendors are "only" as bad as murderers. What the heck are murderers and sex offenders doing getting out of jail to begin with?
That aside, there's a myth that child molest have a higher recidivism rate than other criminals, at least according to these guys.
So tracking child molestors by GPS works with the myth to make Jeb look caring.
In my opinion, there's a really good way to make the child molestation recidivism rate 0. Drawing and quartering would be my first choice. Throw a GPS on the mess left over if it makes you feel better.
HTH
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You should watch the PBS Special, Burden of Innocence. It has interviews with a lot of people who were wrongfully convicted for rape and other crimes, and then their story of how impossible it was to find jobs even when they were completely exonerated.
To quote the site directly:
Only 17 jurisdictions have laws providing monetary compensation to the wrongfully convicted. Of these, the amount of compensation varies widely, from a maximum of $5,000 under federal law, to an unlimited cap in New York and West Virginia.(from here) - That basically means if the Federal Govt fucks up and wrongfully convicts you, you can only sue for $5,000.
The rate of 42% cited from that study was for "any new crimes" which would include anything from fraud to drug posession. It was also the "re-arrest" rate, where the "re-conviction" rate was closer to 20%.
More importantly, the rate for "new SEX crime" comitted by a previously incarcerated sex offender in that study was 5.3% and other studies show the rate amongst "general incarcerated population" to be convicted of a "new sex crime" is around 3%. Since the number of "criminals" in general is so much higher, criminals convicted of "other crimes" actually constitute 87% of the sex offenses comitted by "previously incarcerated" people.
Yes, convicted sex offenders are more likely than the average member of the population to be re-convicted for sex offenses. No, I don't believe it is so overwhelmingly predictable that it justifies lifetime supervision of people who would otherwise be free to go.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.