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Tracking Sex Offenders via GPS for Life
Posted by
timothy
on Mon May 02, 2005 02:46 PM
from the no-railing-around-the-slippery-slope dept.
from the no-railing-around-the-slippery-slope dept.
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."
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Why stop there? (Score:4, Insightful)
<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 [ibs.org]...
(Interesting side note...our president's number seems to be 666 [meepzorp.com].
</sarcasm>
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides the obvious 'those who want to do bad stuff, will be able to remove it', I was amazed at how many of my friends were willing to tag themselves if they had the guarantee that everyone else got tagged too.
I myself am very uncomfortable with the idea itself : Less so, if I got it black-on-white that only a certain radius of a crimescene is used for bringing up the location-data of the people in the whereabouts... Then again, a guarantee given by my (dutch) government, means shit to me.
So who in here would want to 'sacrifice' a little/big bit of his privacy, if you have the guarantee that everyone else gets tagged too ?
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm appalled. I'm just speechless. Do people not realize that they're already criminals? Don't they speed in their car? Didn't they steal gum in the 5th grade? Didn't they ever get drunk and pee in the street? Did they pay every bill on time, all the time?
When you make it easy to lock up all the criminals then you make it easy to lock up everyone. Why are we so willing to nuke the bad guys even though we'll be hit by blast as well?
TW
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Interesting)
My problem is that the current regulations do not discriminate between offences.
1) Go to bar, get drunk, meet girl, bring girl home.
2) Learn next morning she is 17 (still looks like 25) and used fake ID to get in. Also learn her father is a lawyer.
3) Get listed on sex offender list; be tracked with GPS for the rest of your life.
A similar scenario occurred in my area, but with a bar accepting 25 year or older people only. The guy felt safe, she looked at least 25. Being a well known sport hero (making millions a year) the girl literally jumped on him. Next morning she left the hotel room (team was on the road), she bragged around, daddy heard about it and saw the opportunity.
It was explained the only way out would have been to have her and her legal guardian (daddy) sign an agreement for sexual encounter. The fact she used fake ID to get in the bar had no impact, she was a minor, and you are responsible to make sure she was of age, no matter how she acted.
Now calling your lawyer and meet all parties for a signed agreement is not the first thing on your mind when drunk with a girl grabbing your pants under the table.
Until we clearly discriminate between horny young girls and clear violent attacks or pedophile cases, I will have a hard time with harsh regulations imposed post-prison sentenced (debt to society paid and all).
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA.
From the article:
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually that's not true. Statutory rape and associated sex crimes against minors are "strict liability" crimes, which means that your intent or other mitigating circumstances are irrelevant -- if you did it, that's enough to convict. Even if they had a fake ID showing they were the proper age, if the DA decides to bring the charge, then there really isn't any excuse that will work for you -- you have to give the jusy reasonable doubt as to whether or not you actually did the deed.
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sex, however, is generally believed to be normal, even if our society tends to demonize it. For example, the odds are pretty good that your parents have had it at least once.
Nothing is absolutely prevented by condoms, not HIV/AIDS or pregnancy. However, they are still believed to be at least somewhat effective, even against genital warts [nih.gov]. They're not perfect, but they're far better than nothng. So you've heard of STDs. Good. But what does that have to do with screwing a woman you just met in a bar? If I recall correctly, the first time I met my wife was in a bar. That was perhaps 12 years and two kids agoYou could meet a woman in church (or pick some other place for finding wholesome, God fearing women), get to know her for a few months, fall in love, and finally have sex and then get genital warts from her -- she may not even realize that she has it. And then you learn that she's only 17, get arrested, go to prison, and when you're released you get labeled as a sex offender and have to wear a GPS tracker for the rest of your life. Which may not be very long, as some vigilante finds out that there's a sex offender living in his neighborhood on the Intraweb, and he breaks in and kills you in your sleep. (Hopefully they'll take the GPS tracker off before they bury you.)
And genital warts aren't the worst thing you can get, and not the only thing that cant' be cured. And you can also get them without even having sex (kissing could pass them from mouth to mouth.)
Nobody said life was fair. But in theory, our legal system ought to be, and treating `sex offenders' like we do, making them register, tracking their movements, especially when their crimes are stupid things like `public urination' (it varies from state to state, but some do treat that as full fledged `sex offenders'), when we don't do similar things for people convicted of murder, assault and battery, armed robbery, etc. is about as far from `fair' as you can get
But all the politicians have to do is play the `think about the children' card, and everybody involved seems to stop thinking and start jerking their knees instead ...
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, the issue isn't if it's wrong or not, and it shouldn't really be about technicalities of who it is. It's about how right it is to track a person FOR LIFE. Do you really think it'll be that long before other crime punishments pick up the same nifty technology if it's allowed for this purpose?
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is of course, that we certainly do accept the erosion of civil liberties for criminals exactly because they have shown that they are unable to accept the responsibility that the liberties require.
However, there also must be a way to remove these tags should it be later "proven" that you didn't commit the crime. As long as that's in place I don't see that anyone has an argument.
This is simply a case of whether or not you agree that the punishment fits the crime. For child sex offenders many would say this is letting them off too easy.
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't know the first thing about being a criminal beyond what I watch on TV. I do know, however, that my buddy, who's a competition marksman, loads his own rounds and occasionally casts his own bullets because he wants consistency that he can't get from factory ammunition. Is someone going to "require" him to chip each bullet he casts? Even if they do, what's stopping a criminally-minded person from not abiding by that law?
If you put RFID tags in guns, what's stopping someone who wants to use it in a criminal act from taking the tag out? Are you going to somehow make the gun inoperable if it doesn't have the chip? It's not a computer. A gun is a fantastically simple device at the basic level, and not terribly complicated at the most advanced level. Someone who took metal shop in high school could easily crank out a simple shooter.
I agree that guns present a huge issue in our society that needs to be addressed, but you have to understand that, in doing it, you just drive real criminals to step up their game. Also, at what point does the defense of "my gun got cloned" come up in court?
Parent
Wouldn't it be easier to just TAG THE KIDS? (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Parent
Re:Wouldn't it be easier to just TAG THE KIDS? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are thinking 'extremity' while I was thinking 'cranium' or 'chest cavity'. Embed it in such a way that it can't be removed without killing the kid unless you're a surgeon. For example, a small incision to place it on the underside of the sternum would be sufficient.
And I'm of the opinion that "rounding up every sex offender in the area" constitues presumption of guilt based on past behavior, something which the law doesn't allow. If there were an armed robberi at a store and you rounded up every person who had ever stolen something in the county, you would lose your badge. There's no reason for these two crimes to be treated differently.
And what's to say that this even makes sense? An eighteen-year-old having sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend is legally a sex crime in most states. How exactly is tracking this now-50-something guy going to somehow make your 12-year-old daughter safe from child molesters?
The proposal of tagging the sex offender doesn't prevent the crime and, as you yourself admit, doesn't really make any difference over simply knowing who they are. Tagging the children, by contrast, could save lives, allow the perp to be caught in the act (thus making it almost impossible to escape prosecution), and would also have advantages in other situations.
Think about it. You are a parent. You have the right to know where your kids are. "I'm going over to Tina's" could really mean "I'm making out with Bobby at the movies." Hmm. According to this, you weren't at Tina's at all. Care to explain yourself, young lady?
This would also be helpful in tracking down runaways, non-murder kidnappings (often by family members who lost custody), and tons of other situations involving kids. It's a total win-win.
Parent
SOME sex offenders CAN be cured (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why track people who got caught pissing in public? BTW, I have a friend who is now a registered sex offender for pissing on a tree in a park at night, walking home from a bar. Its bullshit.
Parent
Re:Why stop there? (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have a cite for that statistic? I could only find this:
but that only gives data for up to three years after. It doesn't say anything about recidivism after 3 years which may or may not be significant.
Parent
Great idea. (Score:5, Funny)
"warning authorities when a sex offender is someplace he shouldn't be"
Re:Great idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Correction:
2005.05.02-15:52 WARNING: Jackson, Michael has entered Neverland.
All the incidents were reported to have happened at the ranch, right?
Parent
Re:Great idea. (Score:5, Funny)
Tell me about it. This weekend saw a never ending onslaught of "news" folk speculating over a missing Georgia bride-to-be. On CNN, Nancy Grace was hopping up and down insisting that "this is not a case of cold feet".
It was.
In the meantime, these Georgia children [missingkids.com] are still missing.
And none of them have merited even a passing mention on even the local news stations.
Parent
Alerts marked as spam (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Won't it be struck down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Won't it be struck down? (Score:4, Interesting)
And NO, Mr. Jackson isn't listed *yet*
grump
Parent
GO AHEAD (Score:5, Funny)
An age old question (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh... a bit severe, no? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Uh... a bit severe, no? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Uh... a bit severe, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be a threshold of 2 or 3 years difference between the ages of the "offended" and "offender". _AND_ the "offended"'s testimony should be taken into account.
How many times you've heard things like "But dad, I love him!"
Obviously the problem is that we live in a society where kids under 16 are already having sex like wild. Maybe we should lower the age of accountability (or watchamacallit).
What do you think?
Parent
Re:Uh... a bit severe, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
Teen sex was quite the norm not all that long ago, mainly due to the fact that you'd be lucky to make it to 30 before you died.
Young marriage was quite common. You were considered an old maid if you weren't married by 20. So on and so forth.
The problem, as you put it, is the fact that our society is so puritanical about anything dealing with sex. Frank discussions about sex are still something very rare in this country.
Mix this with the media with the "sex sells" mentality and you've got a few million horny teenagers who think that scoring is the next best thing to having their own car for their rep.
If their parents don't talk to them, their TV will.
~X~
Parent
Re:Uh... a bit severe, no? (Score:5, Funny)
Dude! Where is it 14?
I mean... um... that's
Parent
Re:Uh... a bit severe, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please pick one:
a) I am honestly in favor of locking up a 15 year old boy for the rest of his life because he had sex with his 15 year old girlfriend
b) Okay, well maybe I'm just in favor of locking up the guy who who has been falsely accused by his ex-wife during a nasty custody battle
c) Okay, I'll admit it--I don't know what the Hell I'm talking about and am just shooting my mouth off without thinking.
Thank you for your participation
-Eric
Parent
Fine until they take the subway (Score:5, Insightful)
how bout rapists and murders also (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:how bout rapists and murders also (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Not a chance (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Accuracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
GPS for kids (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently saw a GPS locator made for kids to wear...it would attach to their wrist like a bulky wristwatch and continually broadcast its location.
Now here's an idea...tie the two systems together, so if a kid wearing one of these things comes within 50 feet of a known sex offender, it emits an alarm and/or broadcasts a warning to the parents.
I should be rich.
What about this girl? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:What about this girl? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Problem is the definition of sex offender (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Sex offenders only? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Overreaction (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:And why do we let them go free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:And why do we let them go free? (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Parent
Re:And why do we let them go free? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Google Maps (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Why on earth is the modded insightful??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:One Nation (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:One Nation (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Prevention (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Human rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Parent