« Ind. Law - "Vanderburgh County Public Defenders caseload climbing" | Main | Environment - McGrawsville Feed & Grain to $10,300 in penalties for fish kill »

Monday, November 23, 2009

Law "Tracking sex-crime offenders gets trickier"

From today's Washington Post, some quotes from this story by Jerry Markon:

The nationwide crackdown on child pornography and other sex offenses has created severe manpower shortages and technology challenges for probation officers, police and federal agents struggling to track offenders who are jumping online with cellphones and portable game systems and flocking to social networking and other sites, where children or pornography can easily be found.

There are more than 716,000 registered sex offenders nationwide, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a 78 percent increase since 2001, and that does not include all offenders because some crimes do not require registration. Sex-offender registries have grown even faster in the Washington area, with more than 24,000 people listed. * * *

Federal child sexual exploitation prosecutions are up 147 percent since 2002, and the Justice Department is hiring 81 more prosecutors for these cases. Funding for task forces that bring charges in state courts rose this year from $16 million to $75 million.

But many of those offenders are now leaving prison, even as revenue-strapped states are cutting the budgets of probation departments. In Virginia, probation and parole cuts this year totaled nearly $10 million, including $500,000 for electronic monitoring of sexually violent predators. Maryland also has cut its budget.

"The burden on probation and parole officers is going to explode," said Ernie Allen, the national center's president.

The monitoring of virtually all sex offenders is required by law when they are on probation or parole.

The problem has gained national attention with the discovery of 10 bodies and a skull at a registered sex offender's home in Cleveland and revelations that Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped at age 11 in 1991 and allegedly held captive at a California sex offender's house until her reappearance in August. Officers had visited both homes and noticed nothing wrong.

Those cases underscore a troubled registry system that has been the public face of sex-offender monitoring. An estimated 100,000 offenders do not comply with registration requirements. Law enforcement doesn't know where many of them are.

But the most alarming development for officers is proliferating electronic gadgets and the temptations they pose to sex offenders. A man on probation in Iowa for molesting a 9-year-old girl, for example, was recently caught downloading pornographic images of a young girl on his PlayStation Portable -- while walking to his probation appointment. * * *

Sipes said officers are especially worried about social networking sites frequented by children, such as MySpace, which this year said it banned 90,000 registered sex offenders. Facebook has said it is also actively trying to prevent sex offenders from joining its site. * * *

Probation and parole officers use GPS devices, polygraph tests, home visits and treatment to track sex offenders, but those tools can be used only during periods of supervision, which often end after three to five years. Parole is post-prison, while probation is generally a sentence in lieu of prison, but the terms are often used interchangeably.

The newest trend in sex-offender management is computer monitoring, which experts said is being done by a majority of state agencies. Maryland began using monitoring software for sex offenders last month; Virginia is researching it. Most federal districts monitor computers in some form.

A monitoring program installed on an offender's computer is designed to capture every keystroke, Internet site and program, including chat and e-mail. Officials can monitor the computer remotely by logging onto a Web site or getting an e-mail if the offender does anything troublesome.

A side-bar to the story begins:
Sex-offender registries have grown dramatically this decade as prosecutors cracked down on Internet-fueled child pornography and other offenses against children. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says there are 716,319 registered sex offenders in the United States. That compares with about 403,000 in 2001, according to the Justice Department. The majority of registrants committed crimes against children, but other offenses, such as rapes of women, are included.
This ILB entry from Nov. 7th began:
"Keeping track of sex offenders is not easy" I thought this was a great story in the Nov. 6th Greene County Daily World, reported by Anna Rochelle. It gives a picture of all that is involved in keeping tabs on 70 sex offenders in a rural Indiana county.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 23, 2009 09:41 AM
Posted to General Law Related