Wednesday, May 11, 2005

GPS Tracking for Sex Offenders Passes Senate

Legislation to help keep better tabs on registered sex offenders has won final Senate approval and is now headed to Gov. Brad Henry. Sen. Charles Wyrick, D-Fairland, is the author of Senate Bill 631, named “Jessica Lunsford’s Law,” after a Florida girl who was molested and murdered. The suspect in that case is a convicted sex offender. Wyrick said the bill, which was approved unanimously, would require registered sex offenders to wear Global Positioning System (GPS) monitors so that law enforcement can better track their locations.

“Studies have shown that GPS monitoring makes a tremendous difference in recidivism rates. In Florida, offenders released from prison without GPS monitoring re-offend about 33 percent of the time but those who are tracked by GPS had a recidivism rate of only 1.5 percent—and none of the offenses committed by sex offenders on GPS were sex crimes,” Wyrick said. “Clearly, if they know someone is watching them, the public is safer.”

Currently there are 3,000 sex offenders in DOC custody, with many more that have completed their prison sentence and live in communities throughout Oklahoma.

“Our current sex offender registration laws require sex offenders to notify local law enforcement anytime they change addresses but we know that doesn’t always happen. This system will ensure we know where these predators are,” Wyrick said.

SB 631, co-authored by Rep. Terry Ingmire, R- Stillwater, requires that any convicted sex offender placed on probation or parole be required to wear an active GPS monitoring device for the duration of their required registration period. The required registration period is life for habitual sexual offenders and 10 years for other sex offenders. The measure also requires sex offenders to pay for the costs of their own monitoring.

“It is important to point out that this system will save us money in the long-run because reduced recidivism will result in cost savings in prosecution and punishment,” Wyrick said. “But the most important aspect of this bill is that it will enable us to do a better job of protecting our children and others from sexual predators.”

If signed, SB 631 would go into effect immediately and would apply to all sex offenders convicted from that date forward.

6 Comments:

At 1:35 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Monitoring GPS units should be put on all sex offenders within the past 12 months. I recently found out my neighbor is one which really upset me, futhermore individual communities as a whole should be notified. No child should be put at risk for such a predator. If it makes life tough on the offender,oh well,"he made his bed now let him lie in it."

 
At 10:54 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The vast majority of sex offenders don't re-offend. The more serious the crime the lower the recidivism rate. As low as 2.9 percent. This indicates the serious offender is a different type of criminal. When someone refers to a high recidivism rate, like 70%, they don't mention that most new crimes are not sex offenses. The true rate is closer to 15%. We could get it down significantly. 85 percent of sex offenders respond to behavior Therapy. The rest can be sorted out.

If you visit a sex treatment site from Illinios or Texas or several other states you will find two facts.

Most sex-offenders had help making there bed. The family is involved in a big way.
1. The vast majority of sex offenders are themselves victims
as children.

2. If anyone is victimized, it is much more likely to be someone not on the registry. Someone who hasn't offended yet or been caught.

The very low recidivism rate among most sex- offenders demonstrates they respond to correction which is what prison has been up a few years ago and still is in most states. They accept their responsibility and repent.

This registry is going to make it harder for those who want to do better.

Scapegoating won't help.

 
At 2:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh Please! "Scapegoating!? REPENT??" I'd like to know why the mandatory minumum 25 year sentence was not made a part this bill?!? These pieces of human garbage need to be put away forever. Oklahoma's record on protecting our children stinks, as evidenced by far too many recent news stories regarding the violent deaths of children and the apathy of DHS. The only thing I can agree with in the bleeding heart liberal who wants to provide "therapy" is that too often it is a person close to the family that ends up molesting and/or killing a child. Personally, I'd go death penalty, but what the heck, let's use more tax dollars to support these psychos in prison, as long as we keep them there.

 
At 4:38 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

see http://jtjames.spymac.com/ xautoun-zengersbomb-hamurabeye.pdf see chiapas uprising in Mexico against baby-tracking and miltary use of asset to track with grainfull measures of development based on content of xautoun-zengersbomb-hamurabeye.pdf this case caused tenet to resign as he was implicated in office of naval intelligence scandal soliting gain for transponder buy in on baby-tracking required a programmer from cia to conduce measure to assert a right of justifyable prejudice that may have required a type of slander. SEE mark of the Beast and copyright emblem with cia prgrammer taht had to insure that victim was able to be tracked with justifyable prejudice and the framie of J Dedrick.

 
At 11:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There seems to be a serious problem with Ms. Cole who keeps posting on any site online that she can. She was found to be incompetent by a jury trial of her peers and her posts back up their decision. Go to the oklahoma district court site and look it up. Personally, I wish she would quit posting because she is only showing her mental incompetence and ignorance, not to mention her obsession with some guy name Sarg.

 
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