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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:30 pm
Time: 10:30 pm
Results for proposition 83
1 results foundAuthor: California. Office of the Inspector General Title: Special Review: Assessment of Electronic Monitoring of Sex Offenders on Parole and the Impact of Residency Restrictions Summary: Proposition 83 ("Jessica's Law"), passed by California voters in 2006, requires that all convicted sex offenders paroled from prison and required by law to register with local law enforcement shall be subjected to monitoring by global positioning technology (GPS) and to restrictions on where they may reside. The Office of the Inspector General conducted a review of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's electronic monitoring of sex offender parolees and the impact of residency restrictions on sex offender parolees at the request of the Senate Rules Committee. The review found: - The annual costs of GPS tracking has decreased over the past five fiscal years. In fiscal year 2009-10, the department spent $12.4 million to monitor sex offender parolees with GPS. By fiscal year 2013-14, these costs were $7.9 million. - There exists little objective evidence to determine to what extent, if any, GPS tracking is a crime deterrent, although a small 2012 study funded by the National Institute of Justice of 516 high-risk sex offenders found that offenders who were not subjected to GPS monitoring had nearly three times more sex-related parole violations than those who were monitored by GPS technology. Despite the rarity of studies defending GPS as a crime deterrent, the OIG's interviews with parole agents and local law enforcement personnel found that they value GPS technology as a tool for its ability to locate parolees, track their movements, and provide valuable information in solving crimes. - GPS technology adds to parole agents' workloads in certain aspects, while affording time-savings in others. For example, agents spend approximately two hours reviewing and analyzing parolees' tracks for a single-day period. On the other hand, GPS facilitates mandatory face-to-face contacts between parole agents and parolees by allowing the agent to locate parolees more quickly than might be the case in locating a non-GPS parolee. - Over 60 percent of parole agents who supervise sex-offender parolees have caseloads exceeding established departmental ratios (parolee-to-agent) when taking into consideration the mix of high-risk vs low-risk parolees per caseload. In addition, the department has a disparity of caseloads across its parole units, with 14 of the 37 parole units that supervise sex offenders reporting caseload sizes exceeding the department's established ratios for all agents assigned to those units. Simultaneously, five other parole units report caseload sizes below the department's established ratios for all of their parole agents. - Field agents whom the OIG interviewed consistently expressed their concerns that the department-issued laptops used for tracking parolee movements in the field should be replaced by smaller hand-held devices such as smart phones, stating that the laptops were not only cumbersome, but may inhibit officer safety in certain situations. Many agents the OIG encountered were using their personal smart phones for GPS mapping and tracking in the field. - The residency restrictions imposed by Jessica's Law, which prohibit paroled sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children congregate, contribute to homelessness among paroled sex offenders. According to the California Sex Offender Management Board, there were only 88 sex offenders on parole statewide who were registered as transient when Proposition 83 was passed in November 2006. As of June 2014, there were 1,556 sex offender parolees identified as transient by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. While this represents 3.38 percent of all parolees, the incidence of homelessness is 19.95 percent (approximately one in five) among the subset of parolees who are sex offenders. - Transient sex offender parolees are more "labor intensive" than are parolees who have a permanent residence. The OIG interviewed parole administrators in 12 parole districts, who said that because transient sex offenders are moving frequently, monitoring their movement is time consuming. Transient sex offenders must register with local law enforcement monthly (as opposed to yearly for those with permanent residences), thus requiring more frequent registration compliance tracking by parole agents. Adding further to the workload associated with monitoring transients, agents are required to conduct weekly face-to-face contacts with them. - Transient sex offender parolees are more likely to violate the terms of their parole than those who have a permanent residence. Transient sex offenders have committed a majority of parole violations (which include technical violations as well as new crimes) among parolee sex offenders over a recent five-year period. Less than 1 percent of those violations were for sex-related crimes. In the most recently completed fiscal year (2013-14), over 76 percent of the sex offender parolees whom the department charged with violating their parole terms were transient. - While Jessica's Law leaves open the option for local governments to impose their own restrictions on paroled sex offenders, parolees are finding relief from residency restrictions through the courts. Several counties have issued stays suspending the blanket enforcement of residency restrictions to those who petition the local court, and San Diego County has issued a stay suspending the blanket enforcement of residency restrictions on sex offenders pending the outcome of the California Supreme Court's decision of the matter In re Taylor (2012) 209 Cal.App.4th 210, review granted January 3, 2013, S206143. - The California Sex Offender Management Board's findings and recommendations remain largely unaddressed. While some of the board's recommendations have been implemented, most recently with CDCR's implementation of the sex offender containment model, major recommendations, such as tiering registration requirements, reevaluating residency restrictions, and applying best practices for GPS monitoring, have not. Details: Sacramento: Author, 2014. 85p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed May 15, 2019 at: https://www.oig.ca.gov/media/reports/Reports/Reviews/OIG_Special_Review_Electronic_Monitoring_of_Sex_Offenders_on_Parole_and_Impact_of_Residency_Restrictions_November_2014.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: https://www.oig.ca.gov/media/reports/Reports/Reviews/OIG_Special_Review_Electronic_Monitoring_of_Sex_Offenders_on_Parole_and_Impact_of_Residency_Restrictions_November_2014.pdf Shelf Number: 155844 Keywords: Costs of Criminal JusticeElectronic MonitoringGlobal Positioning Technology (GPS)Offender MonitoringParoleesProposition 83Residency RestrictionsSex Offender RegistrationSex Offenders |