Tracking sex offenders with GPS

Strict new laws call for sex offenders to be electronically monitored for life. Critics say the technology won't stop crimes but is fueling hysteria -- and is even counterproductive.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Read more: Politics, ACLU, News, Sex offenders, Katharine Mieszkowski

Dec. 19, 2006 | It's not every Election Day that voters can cast a ballot to banish thousands of people to the hinterlands, but Californians did just that last month, and eagerly so. Seventy percent voted to ban registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park, effectively outlawing them from many residential areas in the state.

Known as "Jessica's Law," after a 9-year-old Florida girl who was kidnapped from her home, sexually abused and murdered by a registered sex offender, the California proposition swept in a myriad of punitive changes. The crackdown on residency applies to all registered sex offenders, including those convicted of a misdemeanor, such as indecent exposure. Most notably, felony sex offenders will now be tracked 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via GPS (global positioning system), even after they're out of prison and off parole. The state senator and advocates behind the proposition call the GPS devices a necessary and vital tool to control sexual criminals.

The California measure makes no distinction between habitual offenders at high risk of striking again, worth having their every move tracked electronically once they're out of prison, and the felons who have served their time and present no apparent threat to public safety in the eyes of the court. Just put a GPS device on all of them, voters said, forever. Now, the state's government and the courts are puzzling out how to bring the voters' sweeping mandate to life.

The broad California measure is symptomatic of a national tide of fear about sexual predators lurking in the bushes by the playground, at the mall, just on the other side of the elementary school fence, and skulking about on MySpace. A sort of boogeyman come to life, sex predators even have their own gotcha TV reality show masquerading as a news program, Dateline's "To Catch a Predator." Every state in the nation now has a sex offender registry, tracking where offenders live. But Virginia, for one, is taking the fight to cyberspace, considering legislation to have offenders register their e-mail addresses and instant-messenger handles, so the Internet can be cleaned up, too.

But as states rush to impose harsher penalties on sex criminals, critics -- legal and criminal analysts, and even some victims of sex crimes themselves -- state that the punitive new laws violate civil liberties and are ineffective. And while a technological fix like fastening GPS devices to former felons may make the public feel safer, it will do little to protect the children who are the victims of most sex crimes.

Currently, 23 states use GPS to monitor some sex offenders while they're on parole. The devices, outfitted on an ankle bracelet, are typically placed on offenders considered at high risk of striking again. Because the conditions of parole often restrict where an offender can go, outlawing, say, schools or day-care centers, the device can behave like a 24-hour virtual parole officer, keeping tabs to see if the offender follows the rules. Nobody disputes the use of the technology for those on parole.

But now several states have decided: Why should 24-hour electronic monitoring end with parole? Even after offenders have legally paid their debt to society, the states still want to track their every move, regardless of their risk for recidivism. "We're finding ways to use technology to create what is a permanent deprivation of liberty," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It raises some very important issues about what the state may do to an essentially free person."

Critics declare that sexual crimes committed by predators are a serious problem, and they don't mean to underplay them. But most sexual crimes, especially those committed against children, they point out, happen closer to home and involve somebody whom the victim knew and trusted, like a family member or a neighbor. The incessant emphasis on the boogeyman, the sexual predator in the schoolyard or on the Internet, can be counterproductive, as resources to fight sexual crimes, and public perception of them, are misplaced.

"The reality is the vast majority of registrants are not predatory, and don't pose danger to strangers, which is the only reason GPS would be useful," says Jeff Stein, a criminal defense attorney, and co-chair of the legislative committee for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice. The new GPS devices, he says, fuel "the hysteria that all registrants are predators."

The strict new California proposition was hatched by Los Angeles state Sen. George Runner. He explained the value of GPS in an October TV interview: "Hey, if you are a felony sex offender, we're going to want to know where you are at all times." Once a GPS device is strapped to an offender's ankle, he said, "a law enforcement [officer] can type in their name and see where these individuals have been over a period of time -- that's necessary."

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit advocacy group, also believes that GPS devices are necessary. "It's a vital tool for knowing where sex offenders are, and using the full weight of the state to ensure that these offenders are going to their jobs and living where they're supposed to live and doing the things that they're supposed to do," he says. "And if they're not, it's important that authorities know about it."

Every state now has its own version of a sex offender registry, but California was the first to create one in 1947. In the state, those who have committed such crimes as possession of child pornography, sexual battery, child molestation, rape or indecent exposure are required to register their whereabouts with local law enforcement agencies, after their release from prison, jail, probation, parole or a mental hospital. Most offenders must tell law enforcement where they're living annually, but based on the severity of their crimes, some are required to do so every 90 days. Some 63,000 of the state's registrants are displayed on the Megan's Law Web site, including the offenders' photo, address, offenses, scars, marks, tattoos and any known aliases.

Although it's a felony not to keep one's registration up to date, many do not. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that of almost 600,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., there are about 100,000 who legally are required to register their whereabouts but have not done so.

In his TV interview, Runner stressed that wearing a GPS bracelet would not just help law enforcement keep track of sex offenders, it would prevent repeat crimes. "We believe ... people will behave differently because they know that somebody can check out where they've been," he said. He suggested that wearing an electronic monitoring device for life is not only good for public society, it's good for the reformed offender, who will be able to prove his alibi every time a new sex crime is committed. "Right now, the normal operating procedure for law enforcement, when there's a sexual attack, is they start knocking on doors of all the people who are registered sex offenders, and they have to prove that they weren't there. The GPS will help them be able to do that."

Next page: "If I raped the child, it wouldn't have told you that"