Satellite watch urged for more sex offenders
01/20/2006
Satellite watch urged for more sex offendersPlymouth Republican wants major expansion of current monitoring
RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press
Minnesota would greatly expand its use of satellite technology to track sex offenders, including monitoring whether some go near schools or playgrounds, under a measure proposed Thursday.
The bill would require several hundred Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders — those considered most likely to commit another sex crime — to wear the tracking devices for as long as they are on supervised release.
That means, for the most dangerous sex offenders, wearing the ankle monitors for the rest of their lives.
“I want to know where they are every minute of every day,” said Rep. Jeff Johnson, a Plymouth Republican and a candidate for state attorney general.
His proposal is one of many potentially costly ways of reining in sex offenders that lawmakers will consider this election year. This week:
• Gov. Tim Pawlenty urged lawmakers to borrow almost $50 million for the state to build secure state hospitals to house civilly committed sexual predators.
• Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, proposed vastly increasing the number of sex offenders assigned a risk level, which may involve a significant state cost.
Johnson’s measure, which already has won Pawlenty’s support, would involve a major expansion of how and when the high-tech global positioning satellite tracking is used.
Corrections officials now use GPS devices to monitor sex offenders only occasionally, based on the individual sex offender, and only for as long as they believe the devices are helpful. This month, 19 sex offenders are wearing the devices.
Currently, there are more than 370 registered Minnesota sex offenders who would be affected by Johnson’s measure.
Along with being issued the tracking devices, offenders released from prison would be assigned zones that they could not enter or zones that they could not leave. Prohibited zones could include areas where children gather, or the offenders could be limited to their homes and places of work.
Minnesota is not alone in issuing GPS devices to sex offenders. According to the National Council on State Legislatures, nine states passed such tracking laws in 2005. Florida has long used GPS technology to track offenders — in 2004, the last year for which numbers are publicly available, it used the devices on more than 1,000 new offenders. Of those, about 40 percent were sex offenders.
Under the Minnesota measure, Level 3 offenders, those at the highest risk of committing another sex crime, would be required to wear devices that are monitored 24 hours a day. Those devices would send positioning information to a central location several times an hour, and that information would be watched all the time.
Level 2 offenders, judged slightly less likely to commit new sex crimes, would have to wear either those active devices or systems known as “passive” devices, which gather information throughout the day but send the information to a central monitoring center only when their transmitters are docked in a stationary portal.
All the sex offenders under such monitoring now wear passive devices.
The active devices have caused problems in the past, Deputy Corrections Commissioner Harley Nelson said. They were alerting corrections officials if the offenders wore a coat that was too heavy or were inside a building with thick walls.
“It is a good tool, but it is not a panacea,” Nelson said.
Nelson said a proposal like Johnson’s would be “very costly.” The devices cost between $12 and $20 per day, and monitoring them takes extra staff time, he said.
If Minnesota began monitoring 370 sex offenders year-round with the GPS devices, the cost of the equipment alone would be more than $2.4 million per year.
Johnson said he did not know how much his monitoring measure would cost the state but assumed it would be no more than $8 million. Whatever the cost, he said, it would be worth it.
“We will find the money somehow,” he said.