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

Why stop there?

[TripMaster Monkey]

<sarcasm>

Why limit this to just sex offenders? Why not all criminals? Heck...why don't we just tag everyone...after all, odds are everyone will commit a criminal act sometime in their lives, right?

I got a great idea....we'll tag everyone, giving each transmitter a unique frequency....their 'number', if you will.

Oh wait....this idea has already been proposed...

(Interesting side note...our president's number seems to be 666.

</sarcasm>

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe he or she is genuinely concerned about erosion of civil liberties, and knows that it is always eroded first for those society deems do not deserve those liberties, and then quickly spreads to everyone else. In other words, like free speech which has to protect the speech you find disgusting in order for it to mean anything, you have to keep an eye on cases even involving sex offenders.

Re:Why stop there?

[88NoSoup4U88]

I had a conversation with some friends about tagging all people on the world.

Besides the obvious 'those who want to do bad stuff, will be able to remove it', I was amazed at how many of my friends were willing to tag themselves if they had the guarantee that everyone else got tagged too.

I myself am very uncomfortable with the idea itself : Less so, if I got it black-on-white that only a certain radius of a crimescene is used for bringing up the location-data of the people in the whereabouts... Then again, a guarantee given by my (dutch) government, means shit to me.

So who in here would want to 'sacrifice' a little/big bit of his privacy, if you have the guarantee that everyone else gets tagged too ?

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a similar opinion:

My problem is that the current regulations do not discriminate between offences.

1) Go to bar, get drunk, meet girl, bring girl home.
2) Learn next morning she is 17 (still looks like 25) and used fake ID to get in. Also learn her father is a lawyer.
3) Get listed on sex offender list; be tracked with GPS for the rest of your life.

A similar scenario occurred in my area, but with a bar accepting 25 year or older people only. The guy felt safe, she looked at least 25. Being a well known sport hero (making millions a year) the girl literally jumped on him. Next morning she left the hotel room (team was on the road), she bragged around, daddy heard about it and saw the opportunity.

It was explained the only way out would have been to have her and her legal guardian (daddy) sign an agreement for sexual encounter. The fact she used fake ID to get in the bar had no impact, she was a minor, and you are responsible to make sure she was of age, no matter how she acted.

Now calling your lawyer and meet all parties for a signed agreement is not the first thing on your mind when drunk with a girl grabbing your pants under the table.

Until we clearly discriminate between horny young girls and clear violent attacks or pedophile cases, I will have a hard time with harsh regulations imposed post-prison sentenced (debt to society paid and all).

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?

[phlyingpenguin]

You're right. That's why I've started suggesting to every potential molester I see that they wait till the kids are at least twelve and a half.

Honestly, the issue isn't if it's wrong or not, and it shouldn't really be about technicalities of who it is. It's about how right it is to track a person FOR LIFE. Do you really think it'll be that long before other crime punishments pick up the same nifty technology if it's allowed for this purpose?

Re:Why stop there?

[Total_Wimp]

So who in here would want to 'sacrifice' a little/big bit of his privacy, if you have the guarantee that everyone else gets tagged too ?

I'm appalled. I'm just speechless. Do people not realize that they're already criminals? Don't they speed in their car? Didn't they steal gum in the 5th grade? Didn't they ever get drunk and pee in the street? Did they pay every bill on time, all the time?

When you make it easy to lock up all the criminals then you make it easy to lock up everyone. Why are we so willing to nuke the bad guys even though we'll be hit by blast as well?

TW

Re:Why stop there?

[dark_requiem]

The scenario you paint is indeed one that needs to be viewed seriously. Remember, the correct way to analyze a proposed government program (unless you're an anarchist like me, in which case the correct answer is a resounding "Nay!") is by the damage it could do if abused, rather than the benefit it will incur if properly administered. This is another example of knee-jerk reactionary legislation, pumped out to score points with the constituency, rather than a serious attempt to solve a problem. And as the first poster pointed out, why stop with sex offenders? Why not non-violent, victimless drug "criminals"? The state loves to scapegoat them, so it seems the perfect opportunity. Hopefully, this legislation is shot down. It's not that I condone sex offenders, but this is extreme beyond all reason, and too readily adapted to whatever is the next crime of the moment.

Re:Why stop there?

[apparently]

Wouldn't any criminal wanting to get past this just create his own bullets? or remove the tag from the gun? Sounds like a great waste of money that only has the effect of tracking legit gun users.

Re:Why stop there?

[jdray]

Okay, we're drifting off topic here, but electronic (or most other means) of tracking guns is only sufficient to track law abiding citizens, really stupid criminals, and people who commit crimes of passion (i.e., those that aren't premeditated).

Personally, I don't know the first thing about being a criminal beyond what I watch on TV. I do know, however, that my buddy, who's a competition marksman, loads his own rounds and occasionally casts his own bullets because he wants consistency that he can't get from factory ammunition. Is someone going to "require" him to chip each bullet he casts? Even if they do, what's stopping a criminally-minded person from not abiding by that law?

If you put RFID tags in guns, what's stopping someone who wants to use it in a criminal act from taking the tag out? Are you going to somehow make the gun inoperable if it doesn't have the chip? It's not a computer. A gun is a fantastically simple device at the basic level, and not terribly complicated at the most advanced level. Someone who took metal shop in high school could easily crank out a simple shooter.

I agree that guns present a huge issue in our society that needs to be addressed, but you have to understand that, in doing it, you just drive real criminals to step up their game. Also, at what point does the defense of "my gun got cloned" come up in court?

Re:Why stop there?

[Queer Boy]

First they came for the sex offenders
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a sex offender.
Then they came for the brown immigrants
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a brown immigrant.
Then they came for the dissidents
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't dissident.
Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak up for me.

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you will drop the tone when one of these nasty fucks attacks a child you hold near and dear? Personaly, if you harm a child under the age of 12 you should be killed on the spot, right there

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.

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?

[slipstick]

How much more "erosion" of your civil liberties is this compared to being thrown in to jail? We accept that as due punishment for a crime, why is tagging someone with an RFID chip not an appropriate sentence? If people know that this will be a possibility maybe they won't commit the crime. Doubtful I know as it's not much of a deterrent really but than would you have had the same reaction if the change in law was simply to make the sentence automatic life in prison?

My point is of course, that we certainly do accept the erosion of civil liberties for criminals exactly because they have shown that they are unable to accept the responsibility that the liberties require.

However, there also must be a way to remove these tags should it be later "proven" that you didn't commit the crime. As long as that's in place I don't see that anyone has an argument.

This is simply a case of whether or not you agree that the punishment fits the crime. For child sex offenders many would say this is letting them off too easy.

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:Why stop there?

[slipstick]

So what exactly is your basic problem with having a punishment for a crime?

Specifically, how is tracking someone for life because they committed murder worse than throwing them in jail for 20 years or so? Each is a removal of a persons civil liberties, incarceration is currently deemed an appropriate removal of civil liberties, why shouldn't the tracking of an offender be likewise deemed appropriate? Hell, as far as I know, if you've only been charged with a crime the police will take your fingerprints and those are kept on file indefinitely. That is a real abuse of civil liberties since you haven't been convicted.

Once your convicted of a crime, the punishment is simply based on what society deems fit. While I could reasonably allow that there are arguments against a lifetime tag, I don't believe you've provided one here. I think it is far worse to incarcerate someone for a period of time than track them for life but I still think that people should go to jail for certain crimes.

Note that this assumes that the tracking device is "easily" removed should it later be "proven" you didn't commit the crime.

Re:Why stop there?

[itsallgeek2me]

Here's the thing, If we're worried about them, why are they free roaming about in public? If we're not worried about them, why are we keeping track of them? You've either served your time/been rehabilitated or you haven't. All this wishy washy stuff is just a band-aid.

Re:Why stop there?

[lav-chan]

I know it makes me sound totally creepo to a lot of people, but i have a really huge problem with sex-offender laws. Like, i would never try to down-play the serious stuff, like rape, but a good deal of the stuff that gets you labelled as a sex offender is complete bull shit.

For example, the other day i was reading about some girl who had a crush on her teacher. They kissed, and the parents of the girl somehow found out. There is no doubt about the circumstances: There was no sex, they were fully clothed, the girl was the one who initiated it, and it was completely consensual. But this teacher is in danger of going to prison, getting a huge fine, and being put on a sex-offender registry for the next 10 years of her life. Not to mention, she'll probably have to sell her house and move to the boonies because she won't be allowed to live near schools anymore. (And, in a lot of cities, that's pretty much everywhere.) All because of a CONSENSUAL kiss.

Consensual minor/adult relationships, consensual incest, and providing pornography to minors are some of the dumb-ass 'victimless' things that are apparently justification for the government to completely ruin your life. (I mean, they're not things i would ever do, but come on.)

I personally am not too worried about the privacy rights of rapists and child-pornographers, so the act of tracking them doesn't really bother me too much. But i don't understand the point. If these people are so dangerous that their every move needs to be tracked, why aren't they in prison?

Re:Why stop there?

[Suicyco]

Yes, but since the law doesn't discern what your actual crime was, it means "anybody who we deem impure from some 'sex' act". You are just a "sex offender". Its meaningless. You rape somebody, you are a rapist. You molest somebody, you are a molester.

Why track people who got caught pissing in public? BTW, I have a friend who is now a registered sex offender for pissing on a tree in a park at night, walking home from a bar. Its bullshit.

Re:Why stop there?

[3terrabyte]

You have a lot of passionate posts on this subject, and I can't really comment on most of your ideas.

But I do have a problem with the idea of tagging someone for life. First, this seems like the wrong place to put the solution. If tagging is NECESSARY, then it's pretty obvious that we're letting them out too early.

Second, this is rife for abuse. We've already heard the problems that have been caused when a sex offender is 'introduced' to the neigborhood. Open database, etc. Imagine how this could be abused. Something as simple as everyone in a city hooking up a horn on their house/store to blare when one of these chips walks by. He wouldn't be allowed to walk anywhere. Refusing to sell goods from your store so such person.

Lastly, civil rights... I'm truly not against their loss of rights in this case. (20 yrs of prison is worse than tagging for life) I'm only concerned about the erosion of the rights for the rest of us. I see RFID leaching it's way into all sorts of things, and this would just be the beginning. On the other hand, prison has a more defined set of rules I don't see being blurred. Why not work on solutions on THAT side of the fence, instead of putting it in Pandora's box of Human RFID.

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.

Re:Why stop there?

[dougmc]

4) Learn that screwing somebody you just met in a bar just might have a negative effect on the rest of your life

As might walking across the street. Or starting your car. Or volunteering at the local hospital, getting a job, raking the grass. Life is dangerous.

Sex, however, is generally believed to be normal, even if our society tends to demonize it. For example, the odds are pretty good that your parents have had it at least once.

(forget the fact more than 1/4 have genital warts and that it is not prevented by condoms

Nothing is absolutely prevented by condoms, not HIV/AIDS or pregnancy. However, they are still believed to be at least somewhat effective, even against genital warts. They're not perfect, but they're far better than nothng.

there is no cure, and it can cause a woman to be infertile).

So you've heard of STDs. Good. But what does that have to do with screwing a woman you just met in a bar? If I recall correctly, the first time I met my wife was in a bar. That was perhaps 12 years and two kids ago ...

You could meet a woman in church (or pick some other place for finding wholesome, God fearing women), get to know her for a few months, fall in love, and finally have sex and then get genital warts from her -- she may not even realize that she has it. And then you learn that she's only 17, get arrested, go to prison, and when you're released you get labeled as a sex offender and have to wear a GPS tracker for the rest of your life. Which may not be very long, as some vigilante finds out that there's a sex offender living in his neighborhood on the Intraweb, and he breaks in and kills you in your sleep. (Hopefully they'll take the GPS tracker off before they bury you.)

And genital warts aren't the worst thing you can get, and not the only thing that cant' be cured. And you can also get them without even having sex (kissing could pass them from mouth to mouth.)

Nobody said life was fair. But in theory, our legal system ought to be, and treating `sex offenders' like we do, making them register, tracking their movements, especially when their crimes are stupid things like `public urination' (it varies from state to state, but some do treat that as full fledged `sex offenders'), when we don't do similar things for people convicted of murder, assault and battery, armed robbery, etc. is about as far from `fair' as you can get

But all the politicians have to do is play the `think about the children' card, and everybody involved seems to stop thinking and start jerking their knees instead ...

Re:Why stop there?

[slipstick]

Ah, now this is better, a reasoned argument against their use, or at least a sharing of concerns, rather than previous off handed remarks automatically decrying the law(not saying you did).

As for your arguments(in no particular order), 1) abuse and erosion of civil liberties for the rest of us. Even prison can be abused, witness the incarceration of suspected "terrorists" without due process. Defined rules or not the government is able to abuse those rules when the populous sleeps, it is the price of "eternal vigilance" that we have a democracy(note that I'm Canadian so the "we" is a global "we"). I don't believe it would be necessarily "easy" to extend an RFID tag on criminals to the rest of us any more than incarceration without due process would be. The law appropriately written must require a criminal act to be enforced. That we need to ensure that the law isn't extended is the business of our respective constitutions but ultimately our peoples. Our Supremes in Canada would find it hard(dare I say impossible) to uphold a law requiring ALL people to have a tag inserted. In fact I would think even your Supremes would have a major problem even the "conservative" ones.

2) "If tagging is NECESSARY...letting them out too early". This may in fact be the case, but I have a much bigger problem with the current practice in Canada of what effectively is an "indefinite" sentence. Basically such offenders are usually incarcerated for a defined period(say 5 years as a guess), after which they are "analyzed" and if it is determined that they are a "dangerous offender" they can be kept in jail. While I understand the sentiment, this seems to me to be patently wrong and way to easy to abuse. A criminal is effectively being punished indefinitely for crimes they MAY commit. If the crime is so heinous that it deserves longer incarceration than the law should be changed to make the maximum longer, period! However, this is still better than the practice of "outing" sex offenders. Again, these criminals have done their time, either leave them alone or pass a law requiring this disclosure, but give us the rules of the game. This has changed of course and laws are being enacted to force sex offenders to register with the police when moving in to an area, but the "outing" used to be done without such a law, sort of like a double penalty.

As for the abuse of the tags, this is more of a "technological" argument in that such abuse could be mitigated or even removed from possibility with use of appropriate encryption on the tags. As well as appropriate enforcement against such abuse(e.g. refusing to sell to someone is discrimination). Having said this however, before I would support the "tagging" of criminals it must be shown that the technology that would be used could not be easily abused in the manners you mention. Which could lead to a better quality of life for offenders who really have rehabilitated. Specifically because they would not be easily "outed" or required to be "outed" by the law. Thus the police would know who they were but the general populace wouldn't, detectors could be placed strategically to ensure these offenders would be noticed if they entered certain areas of parks, school grounds, or other areas where children congregate.

Lastly, it would probably go over better if it was a condition of parole, for instance "either accept this tagging for life or stay in jail another 10 years, your choice." Something like that.

At any rate, I'm not convinced that tagging is appropriate or workable but all my first posts wanted was for people to stop and think before they reacted to a "removal of civil liberties", ignoring incarceration as being even worse.

Re:Why stop there?

[Total_Wimp]

I'm not a criminal, at least not in the legal definition of the word.

Interesting. Do you think you're "normal"? Do you think that everyone should be held to your standards? Do you think every criminal should be "nailed" for every offense they commit?

What do you think of traffic cameras? How about those cameras that follow the people in public spaces and are watched by the police? Do you think everyone should be comfortable being examined? They shouldn't be violating the law anyway, so why should they care?

How about a camera pointed at the front of your house? It's on the outside, right? It's in a public space, right? How about a camera pointed at the back of your house? You've got nothing to hide, do you?

How about that camera in the lobby at work? How about that elevator camera? What do you think about a camera pointed right at your desk? Don't forget the microphone. It's perfectly legal. You've got nothing to hide, do you? You never goof off. You never surf for comics or Christmas presents during company time, do you? You never make personal calls while on the clock.

Don't forget that lojack gear in your car. How are your driving skills? Never make a mistake, do you? You wont mind a government GPS, just to make sure, will you? Why would you care, you're not a criminal. It's just an infraction and those cameras were letting so many people through. Why would you object to getting a ticket every time you exceded the speed limit? 36mph in a 35mph zone? I'm sure you won't care, because you wouldn't make that mistake. And who would object to paying their rightful due for every infraction they commit. I'm sure it won't affect your insurance much.

I'm sure it won't affect _your_ insurance at all, because you're not a criminal. Funny thing is, we already have traffic cameras. They catch _everyone_ who makes a mistake. You don't have to be a "criminal" (by your definition) to get a summons from a traffic camera. But you don't care, do you? Your life is an open book.

You can think you're better than the "criminals" if you want. I hope you're right. It's admirable to strive to do the right thing. But the rest of us aren't like you. We just pretend to be like you and hope no one finds our skeletons. The world will not be improved by finding better ways to expose everyone's hidden crimes, infractions and contract violations and the fact that they're not felonies won't help the people that suffer the consequenses.

I have broken the law and even though you don't consider yourself a "criminal," you have too. Don't be so dumb that you think this is only about the "criminals".

TW

Great idea.

[grub]

"warning authorities when a sex offender is someplace he shouldn't be"

2005.05.02-14:49 WARNING: Jackson, Michael has left
Neverland.

Re:Great idea.

[telecsan]

"warning authorities when a sex offender is someplace he shouldn't be"

Correction:

2005.05.02-15:52 WARNING: Jackson, Michael has entered Neverland.

All the incidents were reported to have happened at the ranch, right?

Re:Great idea.

[The Angry Mick]

It's not news, it's lazy pseudojournalistic exploitation for ratings, and fame for the prosecutors. Take it from an old guy: CNN et al have tanked and turned into tabloid horsecrap. The golden age of news in the U.S. is over for now.

Tell me about it. This weekend saw a never ending onslaught of "news" folk speculating over a missing Georgia bride-to-be. On CNN, Nancy Grace was hopping up and down insisting that "this is not a case of cold feet".

It was.

In the meantime, these Georgia children are still missing.

And none of them have merited even a passing mention on even the local news stations.

Won't it be struck down?

[cayenne8]

I'm wondering if this will be struck down by some court? Punishment after a sentence is done...that doesn't sound like it goes along with the constitution.

Re:Won't it be struck down?

[ForestGrump]

In Calif, tracking is public info. Listed with home address and offense. take a look at meganslaw.ca.gov

And NO, Mr. Jackson isn't listed *yet*
grump

GO AHEAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Track all you like. I'll be at the elementary school giving out candy if you need me. [fp]

An age old question

[bassgoonist]

Public safety vs. personal freedoms. Just how many freedoms do you lose when you sexually assault someone... As someone who is NOT a felon, I see no problem in this tracking... But what if it was a wrong place, wrong time drunken haze kind of thing. I don't know what to think sometimes. You just have to be careful whose toes you step on.

Re:An age old question

[brontus3927]

As someone who is NOT a felon, I see no problem in this tracking...

As someone who is not a jew, I see no problem with the Holocaust...
As someone who is not black, I see no problem with slavery...
As someone who is not Native American, I see no problem with breaking land treaties...
As someone who is not a cop, I see no problem with cops getting shot
As someone who doesn't smoke pot, I see no problem with stiffer drug penalties... As someone who doesn't have AIDS, I see no problem with a national database of people with AIDS.... hey, maybe we can use GPS tracking on them too!

See where this is going?
As a gay American, I DO HAVE A PROBLEM with the rights of groups of people being stripped away because they are "undesirable" and "unsafe to the communnity" By statute, a large portion of the US considers me a threat to marriages everywhere.

Re:An age old question

[Princeofcups]

And what happens when a state decides that two 17 year old boys who have sex with each other are sex offenders? The problem is not that violent sex offenders should be monitored. The problem is, who decides who is a sex offender?

jfs

Re:An age old question

[LurkerXXX]

Yep. I've seen cases where a 17 year old boy sleeps with a 15 year old girlfriend. Get's caught... statutory rape conviction. That makes him a sex offender by law. Now, I'm not real pro young kids sleeping with each other, but I'd hardly consider that 17 year old a 'sexual preditor' that needs to be monitored for the rest of his life. That's just wrong. And asking me as a taxpyer to pay for that is crazy.

Re:An age old question

[DrNibbler]

In many states it can be worse... a 15 year old boy can be having sex with his 16 year old gf and the boy would be convicted of statutory.

Re:An age old question

[C0deM0nkey]

But what if it was a wrong place, wrong time drunken haze kind of thing.

So...now you shouldn't be held responsible for your actions against a 12 year old? What is up with that? Or, to make it less senstational, remove the age (the law deals with attacks on pre-teen children).

I understand you are making the "slippery slope" argument. Anyone out there reading can keep the obligatory Voltaire quote to themselves. What I want to know is when we start holding people responsible for their actions?

People, actions have consequences. You commit a felony, you pay a price. Go through rehab, work out your problems, bully on you. That's great. There is still, depending upon what you may have done, a price to be paid: in this case, you wear the monitor for life or until you can prove you were innocent (in other cases, you have a "record", etc.).

"Judge, I didn't know what I was doing when I traumatized that girl/boy/woman/man because I was drunk/intoxicated/out of my mind/whatever. Honestly, Judge, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and she just looked soooo good." That's bullshit. "Well...she said 'No', but I knew she meant 'Yes'". That's even greater bullshit.

Maybe the reality is: you could not handle the freedom. If you cannot handle the freedom, maybe it should be limited.

There are two kinds of freedom in this world: Freedom to and Freedom from. These two kinds of freedom are in balance. If your society leans towards Free "from" (the United States, for example), you are secure at the expense of civil liberties; if your society leans towards Free "to", you have lots of civil liberty but opportunities are greater for social breakdown (not that it will happen - just that it is harder to control the population if you emphasize civil liberty at the expense of security).

What is the correct balance? Not where the United States is at or presently heading (depending upon your opinion). My opinion, however, is that the United States courts do not adequately hold people responsible for their actions; there is too much leniency and sixth chances and "oh-he's-such-a-good-boy-give-him-another-chance-y our -honor" crap that an attitude of disdain and disrespect for what it means to be a productive member of society is being sown. We need to hold people responsible for their actions; sometimes a bad decision should impact you for life - especially when your bad decision impacts someone else for life.

Uh... a bit severe, no?

[coug_]

I'm not a sex offender, nor have I ever been one, but I do think this is going a little overboard, unless we're talking about using it just to enforce the conditions of their parole and not tacking on new restrictions that weren't previously being made.

Re:Uh... a bit severe, no?

[ximenes]

I think all this stuff against sex offenders lately is kind of misguided. Particularly when you consider what counts as a "sex offense" in some cases. Like being 16 and having consentual sex (although of course you can't "consent") with your 16 year old girlfriend. OK, it's illegal I guess. Does that mean that you should be GPS tracked when you're 85?

Re:Uh... a bit severe, no?

[terrymr]

I remember thinking that when I got one of those police notices of a sex offender moving into my neighborhood. He was convicted of having sex with a girl of 17 while he was 18. The police also rated him as a "high risk to reoffend".

Re:Uh... a bit severe, no?

[PsiPsiStar]

Depending on the state, the age of consent is anywhere from 14 (WTF?) to 18.

Dude! Where is it 14?

I mean... um... that's ... uh... terrible.

Re:Uh... a bit severe, no?

[elrous0]

I am honestly in favor of locking up convicted sex offenders for life.

Please pick one:

a) I am honestly in favor of locking up a 15 year old boy for the rest of his life because he had sex with his 15 year old girlfriend
b) Okay, well maybe I'm just in favor of locking up the guy who who has been falsely accused by his ex-wife during a nasty custody battle
c) Okay, I'll admit it--I don't know what the Hell I'm talking about and am just shooting my mouth off without thinking.

Thank you for your participation

-Eric

Re:Uh... a bit severe, no?

[Spy der Mann]

He was convicted of having sex with a girl of 17 while he was 18.

There should be a threshold of 2 or 3 years difference between the ages of the "offended" and "offender". _AND_ the "offended"'s testimony should be taken into account.

How many times you've heard things like "But dad, I love him!"

Obviously the problem is that we live in a society where kids under 16 are already having sex like wild. Maybe we should lower the age of accountability (or watchamacallit).

What do you think?

Re:Uh... a bit severe, no?

[Xyrus]

Only in western societies (or "advanced") societies is teen sex known as a "bad thing".

Teen sex was quite the norm not all that long ago, mainly due to the fact that you'd be lucky to make it to 30 before you died.

Young marriage was quite common. You were considered an old maid if you weren't married by 20. So on and so forth.

The problem, as you put it, is the fact that our society is so puritanical about anything dealing with sex. Frank discussions about sex are still something very rare in this country.

Mix this with the media with the "sex sells" mentality and you've got a few million horny teenagers who think that scoring is the next best thing to having their own car for their rep.

If their parents don't talk to them, their TV will.

~X~

Re:And why do we let them go free?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

But why do we continue to allow this behavior to go mostly unpunished?

Since when is 25 years not punishment?

Fine until they take the subway

[G4from128k]

And what happens when the person takes the subway or is in a building? People act like GPS is the all-knowing eye in the sky. In reality, it fails in urban landscapes.

how bout rapists and murders also

[bdigit]

Seriously it's like sex offenders are any worse then them? I would like to know where a murderer is and a rapist is at all times too so i can avoid that area.

Re:how bout rapists and murders also

[mrchaotica]

I thought rapists were sex offenders...?

Not a chance

[gevmage]

This is political grandstanding. An example of making a point of "doing something" that looks good on camera and in the newspapers, but doesn't actually accomplish anything. 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.

The proposed ammendment to the US Constitution was a similar strategy; the White House knew it didn't stand a chance, but it put the issue in the minds of voters and polarized people around the issue.

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

Might as well tag the kids as well

[BubbleSparkxx]

Well this seems awfully pointless unless we GPS all children.

Doesn't the government have more important things to do, like regulate indecency on Satellite Radio or make sure Baseball is steroid free?

Accuracy?

[LinuxHam]

And what about Jessica Lunsford's killer? All he did was cross the street. He wasn't where he wasn't supposed to be until he fled to Georgia. What if his trashmen left his trash cans on the wrong side of the street? Will an alarm go off when he's within 50 yards of a house where a potential victim lives? Imagine taking care of THAT database! Who defines where are the places he's allowed to go? Yes they would have figured out right away that he did it, but it wouldn't have saved her life. If you're going to strip liberties, at least make it worth it. (not-so-subliminal rabidity activation scheme here)

GPS for kids

[TripMaster Monkey]

I recently saw a GPS locator made for kids to wear...it would attach to their wrist like a bulky wristwatch and continually broadcast its location.

Now here's an idea...tie the two systems together, so if a kid wearing one of these things comes within 50 feet of a known sex offender, it emits an alarm and/or broadcasts a warning to the parents.

I should be rich.

Alerts marked as spam

[PornMaster]

Too bad that any police department using AOL for e-mail won't get the alerts anyway...

Re:Google Maps

[TheViffer]

Wardriving would never be the same.

What about this girl?

[marshac]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife /2004-03-29-child-self-porn_x.htm

If they succeed in prosecuting her for the crimes they are charging her, she would become a sex offender. Would she have to wear a GPS tracker too?

Re:What about this girl?

[huge colin]

She was charged with "sexual abuse of children"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't get charged with "attempted murder" after a failed suicide attempt. Not sure why this should be any different.

Re:Civil Liberties

[BlakeCaldwell]

then why not leave them in prison forever? why not give them the death penalty?

this is silly. either they've served their time or not. what's next? manditory breathalizer for any ex-con drunk driver when he gets into his car for life? manditory daily urine tests for ex-con drug users for life? key-logging for any convicted computer crackers for life?

how about whenever someone gets out of jail, we give them a second, less-harsh sentence for life, making sure they never repeat their crimes?

you can't do this. this is why there's sentences in the first place. you have to let people live their lives after they've paid for their crimes.

think this out before you support something that seems so simple like this..

Problem is the definition of sex offender

[Monkelectric]

Ill leave the heavy crime and punnishment stuff to someone else, but who can be labeled a sex offender is ludicrious. I knew a lawyer who defended a guy the government was prosecuting as a sex offender for the following:

Guy got drunk, drove drunk, stopped on the highway to pee on the side of a road at 2:00am.

The reasoning went something like, "well, if he's peeing in public, hes exposing himself in public, therefore he's a sex offender."

Re:Prevention

[hoka]

It is very possible. In fact, there was a special on I think 60 minutes a few months ago on this exact topic, because a fair amount of (ex)-sex offenders are being treated very unfairly, ie being discharged from jobs, being treated unfairly socially, and being harassed by neighbors. Even though one of the persons followed would be considered a "good citizen", and was undergoing these relatively experimental testing procedures (it involves showing pictures of various acts, and rating them on a scale of rised emotion), he was still treated unfairly. How would you feel if you had to go to every door in your neighborhood, announce at nearly any sort of background check, that 10, 20, 30 years ago you made some huge mistake? Even if you have since been treated, have moved on, and have kids. And in a world where you can easily be accused and taken to court for something you never did in the first place, you may be labeled for life even though you did nothing.

Re:And why do we let them go free?

[brpr]

I'm half-wondering what part of a civilized society even allows people like this to continue to consume food and oxygen?

That'll be the civlized part of a civilized society. If we were a little more civilized, we might realize that don't we can't become better people through punishing others.

(That's not to say that we shouldn't punish anyone, just that we shouldn't fetishize the act of punishment as if it somehow improved the character of the punishers).

Sex offenders only?

[erroneus]

Someone else made a sarcastic remark about tracking other offenders as well, but I have to worry about this measure and related measures as well. (Earlier today there was a story about Ohio's drunk driver plates and the proposed pink plates as well.)

There are thousands of people falsely accused of crimes on a regular basis and while many (hopefully most) false accusations get cleared up, many do not and it leads to needlessly painful and complicated lifestyles for many unfortunate people. *I* am not one of the unfortunate, but I could have been had investigators not done their jobs investicaging properly. (If I were black or poor or both, I'm pretty sure I'd have been convicted quickly.) But the fact is, being accused alone is often enough to mark a person for life and the abuse of the system is way too prevalant in my opinion. (Countless divorcing men are thrown into jail while wives attempt to maintain custody of children by accusing the men of abuses of all sorts... way too common and sadly, women are rarely, if ever held accountable for making these allegations...and if a defendant cannot afford legal counsel? He's screwed.)

And now yet again people are having their sentances increased beyond judicial order by adding yet another portion of a life sentance. What ever happened to "pay debt to society"? As usual, fear is paving the way to law that abuses the people, their freedoms and rights.

Just to repeat, I'm not an unfortunate one, but I can so easily imagine how I or anyone else could suddenly become one without having deserved it. Hell, even a false accusation that never gets erased can cause irreparable harm to a person's reputation. I almost lost a job because it was found that my ex-wife had made accusations that were documented to be proven false later. I can't get those things expunged without spending a lot of money and I had done nothing wrong.

Why are we doing this? Does it help keep us any safer? Fear is driving people to crazy things.

Re:Human rights?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

It's scary when people are confused between literal and metaphorical usages of words. We describe sex offenders metaphorically as beasts, but anyone with half a brain cell can still see that literally speaking they are still humans. No matter how unspeakable their acts may be, a human is a human and deserves human rights.

Hi there

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post has been forwarded to the Mule Creek State Prison officials.

Re:One Nation

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Actually, you're wrong. People who have sex with children are humans. It's pretty easy to demonstrate. Of course it may be convenient for you to twist the meaning of the word 'human' to help you deal better with various emotional issues you may have. Let's hope you never get into a position of political power where those issues may affect the rest of us.

Re:And why do we let them go free?

[Locke2005]

Why don't we just get over this delusion that jail time is about rehabilitation or punishment, and just admit that we put people in jail because they can't hurt any innocent civilians while they are in jail?

Overreaction

[Dolly_Llama]

This may not be a popular sentiment here, but what is done to sex offenders has gone way overboard.

Consider what 'sex offender' can mean. We're immediately led to imagine a child molester, but consider that a 'sex offense' in some less enlightened areas in the country can be things like

Sodomy (between consenting adults)
Public Urination

Now for those offenders that are the not nice things we are inclined to imagine, either the offender is a threat to public safety or he is not. There may be fine distinctions as to how an offender is considered a threat, but in the end it is a binary condition: Threat/Notthreat.

If the person is a threat, that person should first NOT BE OUT IN SOCIETY, that's what prisons are for! Second, it would be in the public's best interest that the offender be given treatment such that he is no longer a threat upon eventual release.

If that person is not a threat, LEAVE HIM ALONE! This increasingly public punishment of sex offenders makes even repentent, treatable offenders pariahs in any community. Look at what happened to the guy just recently released from Atascadero Hospital only to be bounced around from Mill valley to Oakland to Antioch, people picketing outside of his room, the location of which was released to the press.

Adultery

[PsiPsiStar]

What constitutes sex offense? In Georgia, isn't adultery included? I know the supreme court has struck down anti-sodomy laws.

I assume statutory rape is included with rape and sexual assault. But what about sexual harrassment? What about prostitution?

Re:One Nation

[Qzukk]

Anyone who has sex with children (or even, God forbid, infants/toddlers) can no longer be classified as such.

Riiight.

Because the guy who screws a 17 year old girl two days before her birthday after lying to him about her age is obviously a sick, sick monster.

While you spout this shit off, remember that a 17.9999 year old is still treated like a 4 year old under the law in many states.

Re:One Nation

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

That's right. They shouldn't even get lawyers. Let's just throw out due process while we're at it. Christ knows how the US got a Constitution in the first place given the scant regard most people have for human rights around here.

Re:One Nation (Minor Revision)

[Sandbox Conspiracy]

... under Canada, with liberty and justice for all.

Re:Prevention

[FictionPimp]

When I was 16, I would of killed to have my face all over school saying I just scored. Unless the chick was ugly.

Re:Civil Liberties

[Locke2005]

The point was, there isn't some magical birthday at which people suddenly become responsible. It's a continuum, and some people mature a lot faster than others. There are lots of people older than 18 that are incapable informed consent too -- does that make it ok to take advantage of them, just because they have had that magical birthday? Doesn't it seem a little arbitrary to you that having sex with someone a day before their 18th birthday makes you a sex offender, but doing it a day after is perfectly ok?

Why on earth is the modded insightful???

[wannabe-retiree]

"Under God, indivisible, with LIBERTY and justice for ALL"

Quoting the pledge of allegiance (not a real law mind you) is considered insightful in this discussion??

The Constitution specifically says when Liberty can be taken from someone. Ammendment 5 says that one cannot be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"

So yeah- Liberty and Justice for all unless you are convicted of a crime in which case you forfeit the Liberty part in order to fulfill the Justice part.

SOME sex offenders CAN be cured

[davidwr]

People are on the sex offender registries - usually for life - for a variety of reasons.

Some are 20 year olds who impregnated 15 year old girlfriends.

Some are high school or college students who had sex with a drunk girlfriend in violation of the law that says a drunk person can't consent.

Some are 14 year old boys who don't know how to control their own hormones so they rape their 6 year old sister.

Some rape adults.

Some are child molestors who do it for their own jollies - "kiddie rapists."

Some are pedophiles - "child lovers" - who do it because they mistakenly think the child loves them and wants sex and they love, or think they love, the child. This also applies to cases where the child really believes he or she wants to have sex with the adult, as is the case with a few male teenage victims.

Each needs a different kind of rehabilitation. The first three will probably not re-offend after age 25 because either they will be interested in legal-aged women or are past the "youthful indiscretion" of having sex with drunk women.

The rapists and child molestors come in two flavors - the true sociopaths and those that will eventually buy into societal norms. The former group is probably dangerous for life, and the only thing that will help them is fear of consequences, along with public notification in case that isn't enough. The latter group needs an ongoing treatment program much like many alchoholics find in AA.

The "child lovers" need to be convinced that their conception of a child's desire for sex is mistaken, and that it is more loving to stay out of a kid's pants. Until that time, they fit into the same category as child molestors. Once they buy into this, they are no longer dangerous.

The biggest problem to deciding how to separate "curable" and "treatable" sex offenders from those who aren't is that people lie and people can be fooled. Even 1 out of 10 "false positives" of "cured" or "in treatment and not dangerous" sex offenders means for every 9 who are allowed to resume normal lives, 1 is let out on the streets unmonitored who is a danger to society. Compare this to the estimated 1 out of 1000 people out there who have never been convicted of a sex crime but will commit one later in life.

Re:SOME sex offenders CAN be cured

[bleckywelcky]

There is definitely a gray area in there. At the age of 20, how many of you never checked out a high school chick? How many of you never checked out a 16 year old? I'm guessing somewhere around 1% or 2% ... There are some VERY well developed 15 and 16 year olds out there that look like they're 18 or 19. When you're 20, jumping down 2 or so years is not a stretch. However, by time you hit 25, you should have grown out of that. Is it right that a 20 year old who has sex with a 16 year old should be GPS-tracked for the rest of their life? Hardly. Now, if that 20 year old went for a 12 year old or something, fine ...

Re:Human rights?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Right of justice? I've not come across that one before. Is it in the Constitution?

The whole point of the justice system is to eliminate the victim from sentencing, not to give them the right to carry it out. The reason is pretty straightforward - in political systems where the victims (or the family of the victim) determines the sentencing we end up with a society rife with feuding. As a result, most modern societies have no 'right to justice' in the sense you may be suggesting (and I may be misreading you).

Re:And why do we let them go free?

[JimBobJoe]

These are not people that can be rehabilitated. Sex offenders have amongst the highest rates of recidivism.

Bah! Where do people get this info?? Sex offenders have some of the *lowest* rates of recidivism. Just google "sex offender recidivism" and you can parse the information yourself.

They're wired wrong. They're defective people. What society needs is to protect itself from these people.

There are many issues with that thinking, but simply going from a security aspect, it's not a good use of resources. A child is significantly more likely to be molested by an individual who has never had any previous sexual offense, either reported or unreported. Further, a child is astronomically (I use that word for a reason)more likely to be molested by an individual who is well known to the child and the family, is therefore trusted. The serial molester cases that the media like to drool over are rare and distracting us from more much more risky issues.

I think you wont disagree with the premise that we need to prevent/decrease cases of molestation, but if we know that it is most likely to occur from a person that has never offended, shown any signs of offending, and is trusted by the victim and their family, then clearly, we are approaching the problem from the wrong side of things.

And on a final note, I heard some sorta research (but can't locate) that there's about a 2% disposition toward child porn. That's 1/50 of Americans. In your book, that's quite a lot of people to lock up.

Hilarity.

[Grendel Drago]

You know, I wondered how often something like that happened. I'm sure it wasn't an issue twenty years ago when you needed expensive equipment and your own chemical lab to make porn (yeah, yeah, darkroom chemicals are simple; they're still not trivial, and they leave evidence a little harder to dispose of than JPEGs.) But I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg; there's got to be quite an underground economy in self-produced child pornography. And while it's creepy, I don't think laws sending folks to "pound me in the ass" federal prison were intended for these kids, or the people they tell that they're 'eighteen, honest, I swear, for real'.

I think they were intended more for completely legitimate but thoroughly unsettling sites like this. (Seriously. It's set up exactly like a fucking pornsite.) Which coincidentally, is utterly legal. Funny, huh?

--grendel drago

Once a child sex offender != always

[davidwr]

True, a pedophile is a state of being, much like being gay. Like being gay it is usually fixed. Sure, some people swing from gay to straight or vice-versa over a lifetime, and I'm sure some people swing to- or from- being a pedophile over their lives, but not many.

However, not everyone who has sex with children is a pedophile.

Some men have sex with their own daughters because they are the most "available" person around. Remove children from the house, or if a wife steps in, and the problem goes away.

Others are not attracted to chilren but rather people much younger than themselves - the 25 year old who wants to marry a 10 year old girl may, a decade later, want to marry that same now-legal 20 year old woman, and be happy as her husband 40 years later.

A Questionable Call

[duerra]

My problem with something similar to this idea (not the under 12 thing, but the sex offender in general thing...):

I seriously question how many guys are put into jail today after being accused of raping a girl. How often is it "he said, she said"? What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend rapists, but the whole movie-production of a woman screaming "rape rape!" is hardly ever the case. In today's society, all a woman really needs to do is accuse some non-multi-millionaire of rape, show a little sperm, and he's in jail for a loooooong time.

I definitely don't hold it against some women to pull such an act any more than I hold it against some guy to actually willingly do it to begin with.

Wouldn't it be easier to just TAG THE KIDS?

[dgatwood]

Here's a modest proposal... tag the kids instead.

Look, all of these knee-jerk laws have been in response to some convicted sex offender taking a kid, doing Lord-knows-what, killing the kid, and disposing of the body somewhere. All of the knee-jerk laws, however, fail to actually prevent this from happening.

Would parents being able to find out about sex offenders in their area result in irresponsible parents taking better care of their kids? What if that sex offender just happens to drive through a neighborhood that isn't his/her own? Do those laws somehow help prevent that?

And GPS tracking? Give me a break. That helps you catch the guy after the fact. In all these cases, they've caught the guy anyway, so all that does is reduce the civil liberties of lots of people to capture a handful who would have gotten caught anyway. What's the point?

No, what we need to do is mandate that a tracking device with a lifetime battery be implanted in a child at birth and removed at age 18. When a child goes missing, five minutes later, the police converge, shoot the person who kidnapped the kid, and the kid arrives home alive, rather than in a body bag dragged from the mud of some swamp in Florida.

If you're going to pass a law that reduces civil liberties, at least pick a group that already has no right to privacy. If you're going to pass a law to protect children, at least pass a law that will actually protect children . Makes a heck of a lot more sense to me....

Re:Wouldn't it be easier to just TAG THE KIDS?

[dgatwood]

Is where they embed it a secret? I hope so, or else when they get the kid back there's a lot of stumpy little children running around.

You are thinking 'extremity' while I was thinking 'cranium' or 'chest cavity'. Embed it in such a way that it can't be removed without killing the kid unless you're a surgeon. For example, a small incision to place it on the underside of the sternum would be sufficient.

And I'm of the opinion that "rounding up every sex offender in the area" constitues presumption of guilt based on past behavior, something which the law doesn't allow. If there were an armed robberi at a store and you rounded up every person who had ever stolen something in the county, you would lose your badge. There's no reason for these two crimes to be treated differently.

And what's to say that this even makes sense? An eighteen-year-old having sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend is legally a sex crime in most states. How exactly is tracking this now-50-something guy going to somehow make your 12-year-old daughter safe from child molesters?

The proposal of tagging the sex offender doesn't prevent the crime and, as you yourself admit, doesn't really make any difference over simply knowing who they are. Tagging the children, by contrast, could save lives, allow the perp to be caught in the act (thus making it almost impossible to escape prosecution), and would also have advantages in other situations.

Think about it. You are a parent. You have the right to know where your kids are. "I'm going over to Tina's" could really mean "I'm making out with Bobby at the movies." Hmm. According to this, you weren't at Tina's at all. Care to explain yourself, young lady?

This would also be helpful in tracking down runaways, non-murder kidnappings (often by family members who lost custody), and tons of other situations involving kids. It's a total win-win.