Program Uses GPS To Track Sex Offenders

43 sex offenders in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County are wearing GPS monitoring devices as part of a pilot program designed to keep track of their movements. If the offender moves into an "exclusion zone," police are called. “Exclusion zones for example [are] schools, daycares, playgrounds, facilities where children congregate for those sex offenders,” John Hudson, a security consultant, said. “We’ve identified in their red zones. If an offender with a device goes into one of the red zones, an exclusion zone, we’ll be notified immediately.”

Comments

Re:WTF

[Omnifarious]

That is a common misconception. In fact, the recidivism rate among people convicted of child molestation is lower than for any other kind of criminal. It is true that there is a core population of child molesters who are incurable recidivists, but that represents less than 10% of the total, and I think less than 5%. Look up real statistics from actual research on criminal behavior and don't rely on the stories fed to you by the media.

I just don't get it....

[mark-t]

If a person is going to have to pay for the rest of their lives with such limitations on their freedom, then why not simply execute them and be done with it? Certainly it would have to be loads cheaper than maintaining the infrastructure to manage something like this. Not that I'm saying I'm a proponent of capital punishment in general, but I really don't see the point in continuing to live among other people if one is going to be forever prohibited from functioning as a normal member of society.

I retract my earlier statement

[spun]

It appears you are entirely correct. I had always heard that high recidivism was the reason we treated sex offenders differently. Turns out that sex offenders have a lower recidivism rate than any other class of crime except murder. So why do we treat them differently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender#Recidivism_rates

Re:I retract my earlier statement

[rotide]

Simple answer, punishing boogymen gets people elected/paid.

Re:I retract my earlier statement

[Omnifarious]

We treat them differently because as a society we do not want to think about this sort of crime at all. We don't want to understand it. It's scary and frightening and we would prefer to class those who commit these sorts of crimes as monsters than trying to understand why and what might be broken that would cause these sorts of things to happen.

I also have a theory that every generation has a way of trying to class a group of males as totally unfit. Men and women are born in approximately equal numbers, but in fact we are somewhat polygynous in our actual behavior. This requires getting a large number of males either killed, or out of the dating pool.

That last theory I realize is highly speculative and somewhat trollish. :-)

Re:WTF

[Moryath]

The larger problem is, the recidivism rate is drastically increased by the treatment of those who serve their sentences when they get out. This applies not just to "sex offenders" but just about all of the population.

Can't find a job, can't get a home? Increased recidivism rate. Yet how many jobs ask for a background check and whether you've served jail time in the past X years when you apply, and won't hire anyone with any record at all?

Sex offenders get it really bad because of problems like this. Imagine you're a "sex offender" whose only option, thanks to the "exclusion zones" getting bigger and bigger and overlapping all over, is to live in a shack under a fucking bridge. Now imagine you can't find work because any commute takes you through an "exclusion zone" even if you could find a job. Fuck, even "low income" or manual-labor jobs like construction are out of the question; you are actually under more restrictions than the illegal aliens even if you're desperate enough to work for illegal-alien, under-the-table slave wages.

Step one is reforming the prison system to work more towards rehabilitation and less to "throw them all in a dang pit and forget about it." In this, the Republicans really can be called Retardicans, because they're the ones calling for ever-increasingly-tough "punishments" constantly until the punishments massively outstrip the crimes and tend to serve not to rehabiitate, but forever debilitate the incarcerated so that they'll never be able to reform and rejoin society, ever. Retardicans are responsible for the fact that today's prisons are places where violent gang criminals are taught to be even nastier.

Step two is making sure that, once people get out and reenter society, they're given a chance to actually reintegrate and become productive members. Our current system of "exclusion zones" may help somewhat, but it's far too onerous and makes it impossible for those caught in its web to survive. "Instant GPS phones the cops" is going to mean "fuck, he clipped the edge of it trying to get food in a grocery store" for these amazingly huge zones - a 2500 radius exclusion zone is 5 city blocks' radius.

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

But the whole crux of the argument is, "are they a danger?"

The "common knowledge" is that sex offenders are drooling perverts with no self-control.

Statistics and data don't back that up. In fact, they indicate exactly the opposite is true. Sex offenders are the least likely to have committed other crimes, to have damaged property, or caused physical injuries to others outside of of their obvious sex crimes. Being "black" is a much better indicator (statistically speaking only) of future criminal behavior than being a sex offender.

So are they REALLY a danger?

And if so, what does that indicate about other groups which have a higher than usual proclivity to crime, like males in their 40s who have never been married, or people who are on antidepressants?

Did you know, starting about 5 years ago, the greatest danger to kids aged 8-16 today other than accidents is actually suicide? Not abduction or murder, but suicide. Kids are treated like property, are locked up and kept "safe" their whole life and now they're killing themselves in numbers that far outstrip the number of murders and abductions that these wacky behaviors are intended to prevent.

Score one for the good guys, right?

They are locked away