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."

Comments

Re:Why stop there?

[BrowserCapsGuy]

Somebody needs a class in civics. The governor cannot pass a law. He can only sign it into law or veto it.

Re:Why stop there?

[Bodysurf]

RTFA.

From the article:

"It establishes a mandatory sentence of at least 25 years behind bars for people convicted of certain sex crimes against children 11 and younger, with lifetime tracking by global positioning satellite after they are freed."

Re:Why stop there?

[Macadamizer]

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.

Re:Why stop there?

[Seanasy]

Because the rate of recidivism for violent sex offenders is nearly 100%

Do you have a cite for that statistic? I could only find this:

Of the 9,691 male sex offenders released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, 5.3% were rearrested for a new sex crime within 3 years of release. [USDOJ]

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.

Re:Not a chance

[tommyServ0]

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

Re:Why stop there?

[enjo13]

I found :

http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/docs/sxoffend/page1.ht m

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.