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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."
<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>
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"warning authorities when a sex offender is someplace he shouldn't be"
Trolling is a art,
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Track all you like. I'll be at the elementary school giving out candy if you need me. [fp]
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.
You can tell I'm an aries because of my ram.
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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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.
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.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Too bad that any police department using AOL for e-mail won't get the alerts anyway...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Wardriving would never be the same.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
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?
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..
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."
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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).
Freedom is not increased by mere diminuation of government. Anarchy is freedom for the strong and slavery for the weak.
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.
Parent post has been forwarded to the Mule Creek State Prison officials.
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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
When I was 16, I would of killed to have my face all over school saying I just scored. Unless the chick was ugly.
"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.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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).
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
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....
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