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California Tracks Parolees With GPS, Then Ignores Alerts
An anonymous reader writes "Several years ago, California decided to require high-risk parolees, such as gang members and sex offenders, to wear GPS monitoring devices. The idea was to relay location information to law enforcement to ensure that the convicts stay where they're supposed to. Unfortunately, the state often misses acting on those alerts, making the devices both a lesson in the pitfalls of technology management and a massive exercise in largely useless spending."
So if a crime is committed somewhere, it will be relatively easy to check whether any of the paroled felons were in the vicinity when it happened.
So, deterrence factor against committing further crimes will still exist.
This project probably got through on some scaremongering bill but then when the non-vote winning budget was needed, the politicians knew that the voter does not want to spend any money ever, and voted against it.
Police costs a LOT of money. Crime costs even more but no politician has to raise taxes to fund crime.
Take the "three-strikes" law. Interesting idea, but did anyone in favor of it ALSO vote to increase the number of jails by about a 1000%? Because ALL those rotating door criminals that were out in a couple of months are now in for life. Even if you lock them four to a cell and reduce their life expectancy that way, you still are talking about housing an awful lot of people for a bloody long time. And a life-sentence looses its meaning if they are paroled after 6 months because the need the space.
And if you are against the "three-strikes" system? Then what is your solution and how are you going to pay for it? Prevention? Lots of cops and social workers. Re-education? lots of parole officers. Treating those with mental problems before they come to harm? Very expensive mental hospitals (which were cut and now jails fullfill their role).
This project most likely was started as a way to aid parole officers in their job. Then it became a way to cut costs instead and now you got fewer parole officers with more duties and ever more prisoners to track.
But hey, you got a tax cut... oh wait no. that 300 dollars has seen been added to your bills multiple times.
Oh well. That is what you get for giving everyone the vote. You turn the running of the country into Idols.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Maybe so, but they still have time to deal with a high profile case like her before the sex offenders.
Texas may not be AS BAD as California - but they are working on it. A prisoner convinced the entire prison system that he was paralyzed, couldn't walk, and rolled around the prison in a wheelchair for quite a long time. Then, he convinced the prison officials that he needed some kind of medical attention, which required he be sent to a more central location, with better facilities. Somewhere between here and there, he pulled a weapon, relieved his two guards of THEIR weapons, and took off. Wasn't paralyzed at all!!
The shitbird didn't stay free for long though. The inept bungler was recaptured, without resistance, in about a week.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/02/texas.escaped.prisoner/
Oh - another story of ineptitude, in Houston. A teen was arrested, searched, taken to the local jail, and during his booking, he was "strip searched". No cop is allowed in the same room with him while naked, so you have one cop looking in through a doorway on one side, and another cop looking in through a doorway from the other side. The kid managed to smuggle a pistol into his jail cell, because the cops couldn't watch the kid.
I'll bet every state in this country has similar stories to tell. People joke about backwoods inbred Arkansans - but we had a scene out of one of those stupid movies. A prisoner sweet talked the jail warden's wife into giving him a gun and a vehicle.
Phhht.
As long as there are people, we can be assured that stupidity will survive.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You see this kind of shit in IT all the time: $boss gives you $new_shiny but does not give you the human resources to manage said $new_shiny, resulting in $new_shiny not being effectively used. Result: $boss jumps on your ass for not utilizing $new_shiny, even though you didn't ask for it (or asked for it with the necessary addition of more humans).
Only difference in this case is that it's cops not IT people.
I suspect that information inundation has something to do with it, too: how many parolees are there who are violating their parole? If it's more than a scant few, chances are they don't have the force numbers to pay attention to the alerts, never mind actually act on them.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
at one time, when gilded age corporatist assholes employed pinkerton's thugs to kneecap guys just trying to earn enough to feed his children, unions were heroic and noble
Now the corporatist assholes jack up your health insurance co-pays, (or your premium rates, or just plain get rid your your healthcare benefits) raid the company pension plan (if it still exists) for a new condo in Maui, or manipulate the stock price (which is a nice chunk of your 401k) to make a few bucks on the side, or run the company into the ground and get their golden parachute when they 'resign' while the other execs vote themselves raises and keep their bonuses under the guise of "retaining quality employees" (the same employees that have been running themselves into the ground).
It's not the unions that suck, its greedy human beings that suck. Just because the business card says Committee man or Union Delegate doesn't make their actions any different than someone whose card says MBA or CFO. Greedy entitled pricks are greedy entitled pricks. At least when they were hiring pinkertons the pinkerton agent wasn't telling you that what he was doing was "good for the company" or was what was "right for our shareholders" while you took a beating.
There are plenty of fatcat pricks in unions (just like how there are plenty of useless factcat pricks where you work. They're not a union specific breed), but that doesn't mean that a *funded* pension, decent health care, and a good wage are evil awful naughty things that only liberals believe in.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I live in San Diego, one of the most idiotic knee-jerking cities for this ever since that offender raped and killed those 2 girls, and the problem in TFA was just described in a recent newspaper.
The problem with those things is that there are too many damn false alarms(such as the bracelets accidentally breaking or running low on power), or true alarms which don't warrant attention(for example, when a person who's supposed to stay 2000 feet away from a school has to briefly come within 1900 feet on their way home etc.)
It's kinda like UAC: when so many seemingly insignificant warnings keep popping up, you learn to ignore the messages and keep clicking "OK."
-- Althanol-powered
( posting incognito as anti-establishment viewpoints are not welcome in S.D. )
Me too. My wife even sat on the county board of the nurse's union back in the 1990s, but when SEIU took over the California Nurses Association, she resigned and never looked back. SEIU thugs all converged on a state CNA meeting in Sacramento one year and elected a new state executive board consisting of all SEIU members, and no CNA members. Rose Ann DeMoro became the new state chair of CNA, a post she has held now for almost 20 years. Ms. DeMoro has never in her life been a nurse or worked in a hospital. She has spent her entire adult life as a union organizer with SEIU. Most of the old CNA members (real nurses who really work in hospitals and provide real patient care) have now formed a new professional association (not a union), but they no longer negotiate labor contracts with hospitals.
While private sector labor unions have fallen into irrelevance over the past two decades (and taken down General Motors and Chrysler with them), the largest proportion of union workers in the United States are now public sector employees, i.e., government workers. Government workers are paid by the taxpayers, but produce absolutely nothing to benefit the overall economy. Or they are police officers, firemen, or prison guards, who "serve and protect" the public, either putting their lives in danger every day (what they want you to believe) or writing traffic citations, taking afternoon power naps or eating doughnuts (what they really do). They don't make new products to sell to the rest of the world, they don't produce anything of tangible value to raise our standards of living, and mainly just do paperwork to conform to government regulations.
And reducing the benefits and/or number of employees is hardly going to help get those remaining "to do boo about" parole violations, is it?
The situation is complicated, but it is the sheer number of employees and the level of benefits that comprise a bulk of the budget problem. Remember, when a politician says "we've cut to the bone" the translation is "we've reduced next year's increases a bit". The illegal aliens don't help, but, well, I'm the moral equivalent to three Hitlers plus two Stalins times a Charles Manson for even daring to mention it, right?
They already managed to get a 2/3 vote last year and pass the largest state tax increase in US history, and it accomplished *nothing* because about 90% of the budget is considered holy and sacrosanct and untouchable.
*shrug* It's too late anyway, because *I* don't care anymore, either. Not really. Neither does anyone else with a functioning intellect. The smart folk are abandoning this ship of fools as soon as they can. The extemists are gerrymandered in and it'll be asshat after asshat from here on in. Look who the Democrats are running for governor now: Jerry Brown. That 9000 year old blithering fossil's actions during his last stint as governor in the 70s are at the root of many problems this state is having today! But, yeah, vote that wrinkled senile sack of crap back in! Yay!
But you just keep hiring more state workers and raising those benefits. I say reduce the 2/3 majority requirement for tax increases and let the low wattage loons in Sacramento have a field day. Anything that can hasten official state bankruptcy is a *good* thing. Let the creditors take over. That's the time to sit back and break out the popcorn.
Consider fire fighters. Smoke inhalation, heavy exertion, burns, broken bones, frostbite - you name it. My father in law is a retired fire fighter and he has gnarled fingers, circulatory problems, a bad back, some burns, missing teeth, digestive problems, the list goes on.
Doing that for 30 years, then retiring, I don't EXPECT them to be able to work at something else. Nor need to.
Same with the Police and the military, who lay their health and life on the line. They deserve it - it's the least we owe them.
So bitch about CEOs and Union workers if you want, but don't bitch about those that protect you - in spite of your attitude.