By Jason Szep

Coast to coast, the authorities are expanding electronic monitoring to fight crime. They are moving beyond its early use in tracking movements of sex offenders to include gang members who have been released on probation, people accused of repeated violence against women and even truant students at schools. Read full article

 

Bill requiring sex offenders submit to lifetime GPS monitoring passes Senate

 

RALEIGH - A bill requiring adults who molest children to submit to lifetime GPS monitoring unanimously cleared the Senate on Tuesday.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston, also makes it a misdemeanor to tamper with a GPS device. The monitoring requirement would be retroactive and would apply to offenders committing crimes after Aug. 16, 2006.
Hoyle’s bill, which passed 50-0, now goes to the House.
It is designed to supplement the Jessica Lunsford Act, which would require adults who rape children younger than 13 to serve a minimum of 25 years in prison and submit to lifetime GPS monitoring once released from prison. Read full article

 

Tracking Device-How about using GPS monitoring to stop batterers?

 

Last month, 26-year-old Rebecca Griego was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend, Jonathan Rowan, as she sat in her administrative office at the University of Washington. Rowan had previously threatened to harm Griego, her sister, and their dogs, and she had gotten a restraining order. She’d also passed out pictures of him to her co-workers so they could serve Rowan the order if he showed up at the campus. And she’d moved to a new apartment and started working from home for two weeks before her death. None of this, of course, helped her.

 

What might have? In fact, Washington had a good tool in place: a state law that allows judges to impose electronic monitoring as a condition of a restraining order. When judges so order, the police can keep tabs on abusers with a technology best known to people who are bad with directions: the global positioning system. Read full article