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GPS tracking of ex-covicts

 
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 10:10 am    Post subject: GPS tracking of ex-covicts Reply with quote

In my book Murder on a Horse Trail I advocate GPS monitoring of violent criminals while on probation. I do not suggest releasing them early to do so. In fact, I advocate building as many cheap prison cells in a remote place such as the desert as necessary to hold everyone convicted of a violent assault for their entire sentence, then monitor them when they are released on probation.

rd

from www.foxnews.com (fair use)

Oklahoma Prisoners to Be Tracked Using GPS
Friday, May 07, 2004
Fox News

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Oklahoma’s governor has signed a controversial bill into law calling for the early release of state prisoners. But there’s a catch — those qualified for early release will be required to wear a global positioning satellite system ankle bracelet at all times.

Although the law could save taxpayers $10 million, opponents say the bill is too soft on crime.

“The encouragement to have criminals not commit a crime is to keep them in jail for the entire time the judge imposes,” said Oklahoma state Sen. Cliff Branon, a Republican. “Have them serve their entire sentence.”

Other opponents say the plan undermines the whole deterrent factor of imposing a prison sentence in the first place.

Inmates who qualify for the GPS early-release program are non-violent offenders; they are convicted for crimes like drug trafficking and burglary. They must also have 11 months or less of their sentence left and must be eligible for being transferred to a halfway house.

Prisoners will have to wear the GPS ankle bracelet 24 hours a day for the duration of their sentence or they go back to prison. Department of Corrections workers will track the criminals via computers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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jane



Joined: 22 Sep 2002
Posts: 3225

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 12:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is a case of a violent sexual predator (castrated and GPS banded) being released into the community. The GPS monitoring will cease after a year if he stays out of trouble.
________________________________________________________
from the San Francisco Chronicle

7 May 2004

VACAVILLE
Angry, frightened residents gird for arrival of released serial rapist
Convict to wear tracking device -- cops offer tips to community

Kari Chavez, a 32-year-old Vacaville manicurist, walked into a gun shop Thursday and bought a .357-caliber Magnum revolver.

"And I won't hesitate to use it if he walks into my house," she said.

Chavez was referring to 48-year-old serial rapist Patrick Ghilotti, who within days is expected to move in across the street from her, her husband, Frank, and their 3-year-old daughter, Alyssa.

Her blunt words summed up the emotions of many in Vacaville after a Marin County judge on Wednesday made Ghilotti the third sexually violent predator to be released from the state's 8-year-old mandatory treatment program for convicted sex offenders at Atascadero State Hospital.

Ghilotti is to move into his wife's Silvey Acres Drive home "at the earliest practicable time" after he agrees to a list of conditions that include wearing a tracking device at all times, wrote Judge Stephen Graham.

The state has struggled mightily to find places where sexually violent predators can live without being chased away by furious residents. Following suit, Vacaville neighbors vowed Thursday to make their city of 95,000 unlivable for Ghilotti. They said Ghilotti was too dangerous to be released and, at any rate, shouldn't live in Solano County when he committed his crimes in Marin County.

State Department of Health spokeswoman Nora Romero said her office had tried unsuccessfully to find Ghilotti an apartment or motel in Marin County. That didn't sit well with folks in Vacaville.

"The neighbors' property values are destroyed, their way of lives are destroyed, and the court doesn't seem to care," Vacaville Mayor Len Augustine said at a City Hall news conference. "I just hope he decides Vacaville is not the place for him."

Neighbors hung signs outside their homes reading "Experiment with rehabilitation somewhere else" and "Nightmare on Sylvie Acres." Lucio Cortez said she and her husband, who have two children, ages 2 and 7, had told their landlord they were moving. Bob and Helen Beougher said they were installing security doors and windows and an alarm system.

Bob Beougher also said he was so frustrated that he couldn't comfort his wife, who spent much of the day in tears.

"I can't help her," he said. Pointing to the added security measures at their home, he added, "I have to build a prison."

Police were providing counseling in English and Spanish to frightened residents, going door to door to advise people on door locks and lighting and vowing to increase patrols through the neighborhood. City officials are studying whether they can seek an injunction barring Ghilotti's release to Vacaville.

Ghilotti's wife, Janet Frankhouser, who was an employee at Atascadero when they met, has declined interview requests. His Marin County public defender, George Shea, did not return a phone call Thursday.

Ghilotti was convicted in 1979 of raping three San Rafael women and became known as the "Lincoln Avenue Rapist." He served three years in prison.

He was convicted again in 1985 of raping a Ross woman and served 12 years. In March 1988 Ghilotti became one of 467 people who have been placed in the sexually violent predator program, and he received intensive therapy and surgical castration.

Under his release, Ghilotti must wear a satellite tracking system, submit to random drug tests and searches and cannot attend any of a list of large Marin County public events, including the county fair. After a year, he will be evaluated and becomes eligible for unconditional release.

Ghilotti is the third sexual predator to be released from Atascadero. Brian DeVries, 45, lives in a trailer at Soledad State Prison. Cary Verse, 33, lives in a San Jose motel after being booted from housing in Mill Valley and Oakland amid local outcry.

E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Sun Jul 18, 2004 8:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is England doing more of what I advocate in Murder on a Horse Trail.

rd


from http://news.independent.co.uk (fair use)

Satellites will track 5,000 of the worst criminals in Britain
By Sophie Goodchild and Andrew Johnson

18 July 2004

Satellite technology will be used to track 5,000 career criminals who are responsible for one in every 10 crimes in Britain, the Home Secretary David Blunkett will announce tomorrow.

The radical new technology, which has been developed in the US, will enable law enforcement officers to pinpoint the exact location of criminals who have been released early from prison and fitted with electronic tags.

It will feature among a series of measures in a five-year plan to tackle burgeoning violent crime and antisocial behaviour. Home Office figures released next week will show police forces recording rises as high as 25 per cent.

A Home Office source said: "We are the largest users of tagging outside the US and we will continue to do this. We will introduce satellite tracing for prolific offenders as well as for domestic violence and sex offenders."

Other measures include increasing the number of community support officers from 5,000 to 20,000 by 2008, putting drug-using criminals through treatment programmes and locking up those who refuse help, as well as making greater use of antisocial behaviour orders.

Tony Blair is expected to reassure voters that protecting "law-abiding citizens" from lawless teenage gangs and drunken yobs will be central to government policy.

Although car crime and burglary have fallen, the annual crime survey this week will show the public and police are reporting a worrying rise in assault, harassment and alcohol-fuelled thuggery.

This is backed up by crime statistics obtained by The Independent on Sunday recorded between March 2003 and April 2004 by seven of Britain's largest police forces. In West Yorkshire, antisocial behaviour incidents rose by nearly nine per cent in the city of Leeds, from 55,813 cases to 60,136. Across the whole of the West Yorkshire force, antisocial behaviour rose by six per cent from 162,669 to 173,045.

In the West Midlands, harassment offences were up by about 22 per cent; common assault increased by 15.9 per cent and public order offences by just over 12 per cent. There was an upwards trend in North Yorkshire with violent crime in a public place rising by 25 per cent and drink-related violence by 11 per cent. In Avon and Somerset, community disorder rose by just over seven per cent, while across Devon and Cornwall violent assaults rose by 9.5 per cent and in Dorset violence against the person rose by 12.2 per cent.

Chief constables attribute the rise to a greater emphasis on tackling antisocial behaviour and drunken disorder, which means more people are being arrested and more victims are reporting crimes. However, this is unlikely to remove the widespread perception that not enough is being done to make streets safer.

Crime reduction groups say the proposals will fall disproportionately on young people and those already marginalised by current government policy. Richard Garside, director of the Crime and Society Foundation, said that the initiatives would do little to tackle the causes of crime.

"Antisocial behaviour is not just a matter of the naughty child or the boozy adult," he said. "It is also antisocial for the Government to pursue headline-grabbing initiatives that risk criminalising whole groups of individuals while doing little to tackle the causes of crime."
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

from www.boston.com (fair use)

Global positioning to track sex offenders
By Elise Castelli, Globe Correspondent
September 21, 2004

Global positioning systems and electronic bracelets will be used to track more than 200 of the state's most serious sex offenders on probation or parole starting early next year, Governor Mitt Romney and state lawmakers announced yesterday.

Under a $1 million pilot program Romney signed into law on Friday, the tracking system would alert probation officers when offenders violate conditions of their release by entering an ''exclusion zone," such as a school, a playground, or the home of a prior victim. Using cellular technology, the system records and sends a record of the exact date, time, and location of the violation via text message or e-mail to the officer handling the case.

''We're working hard together to make sure that if you're a dangerous sex predator, Massachusetts is your worst nightmare," Romney said. ''This is an ongoing effort. We will not rest until we know that every child, every citizen in our Commonwealth feels that they can be safe from dangerous sex crimes."

All 219 level three sex offenders on probation or parole in Massachusetts will be fitted with the device at the cost of $10 per person per day, he said. The state's remaining 896 level three offenders have already completed their parole or probation and are only required to register as sex offenders. Level three sex offenders are those deemed the most dangerous and most likely to reoffend.

The sex offender tracking program will be the first statewide GPS initiative in Massachusetts. Currently, GPS tracking of people convicted of various crimes is in place in more than 30 other states. Romney said that the results of this pilot program would dictate whether to expand it to other offenses. The $1 million appropriated will finance the program for approximately four months, and Romney will ask the Legislature to fund the program for a full year in the 2006 budget.

The Middlesex County sheriff was the first to use GPS tracking in Massachusetts. That program, piloted in March, monitors 30 inmates in the county's work release program, and acts as ''one more check to ensure that the inmate is going to and from their workplace," said Mark Lawhorne, spokesman for the sheriff's office.

Unlike present passive systems of electronic monitoring, which only tell officers when the offender enters or exits his home, the active GPS system will allow the officer to locate the offender to within 10 yards of his location, said Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, a Lowell Democrat who sponsored the budget provision for the program.

The legislator said research for the bill indicated that states with the tracking system have seen a decrease in repeat sex offenses. He said he expects similar results in Massachusetts and asserted that the program will protect ''neighborhoods and our families" from convicted sex offenders who are on probation.

''If you are a level three sex offender and doing the right thing, you probably want this on, because you won't be called in by police every time something happens in your area," Panagiotakos said. ''They are going to know where you were."

In addition to alerting police to parole violations, Romney said, the new program will track sex offenders if they move from one town to another and fail to register there, because police can monitor the offender every hour of the day. In January, a Woburn woman and her daughter were allegedly killed by a level three sex offender who was registered in Lowell, but frequented the area of the slayings.

The system requires that the offender wear two pieces of equipment: an ankle bracelet and a GPS tracking unit on the waist. Parole officers would be alerted if the distance between the two units exceeds a limit -- signaling one piece of equipment has been removed -- or if the bracelet is cut. The ankle bracelet ensures that the offender does not wander from the GPS unit.


An earlier version of the GPS tracking legislation would have permitted tracking for all level three offenders, but was limited to those on parole and probation because the program would have been left open to constitutional challenge, Panagiotakos said.

Civil libertarians argue that once convicted felons complete their probation, they should not be subject to close surveillance by the state. The new tracking requirement follows a court ruling earlier this summer that allowed the state to post the names and addresses of level three sex offenders on the Internet.

A civil liberties activist yesterday argued that there might be better ways to spend money on protecting victims, rather than creating a new form of survelliance. ''Since the law has been limited to people under state control, the question is whether or not this is the best place to spend money if you are interested in crime control," said Ann Lambert, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. ''The reason to have supervision of people when they come out of prison is both a surveillance and a support function. Probation will end, and you want people to function in society when it ends."

''You shouldn't be hypersurveilled to the point which it's counterproductive and the surveillance is so pervasive that you are functionally locked up and not capable of operating in the free world," she added.

''This is only level three sex offenders, and in this case, the needs of public safety outweigh the sensitivity associated with those individuals," Romney said.

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey said the administration is working with legislators to pass an omnibus bill that would toughen sentences for sex offenders.

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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