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| Satellite tracking to target parolees |
| By Contra Costa Times |
| Published: 05/17/2004 |
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The Schwarzenegger administration last Tuesday said that later this year it plans to begin tracking as many as 500 paroled sex offenders for up to 24 hours a day with a high-tech monitoring system. As a way to boost public safety, sex offenders would be required to wear a gadget that would track their minute-by-minute movements using Global Positioning System satellite technology. Roderick Hickman, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Corrections secretary, could not immediately say where the pilot program will be deployed or its cost. Neither could he estimate the cost of the overall reforms, including hiring additional staff. Last year, the state's Little Hoover Commission described the parole system as "a billion-dollar failure" in which inmates are ill unprepared for life outside of prison. Hickman acknowledged that the system is failing. He outlined a strategy that paralleled changes the Davis administration agreed to pursue and which have begun to lower the number of parole violators sent back to prison. Among other things, it allows some parole violators to be diverted into drug-treatment programs or job-training classes. The satellite tracking of offenders is not new in California. Two offenders under supervision of state mental health officials are required to wear tracking devices. One is Cary Verse, a convicted sex offender, who has been living in a San Jose motel. Some other cash-strapped states also have been using GPS tracking -- which employs 24 satellites 11,000 nautical miles above Earth -- to save money at a time of tight budgets. Corrections officials said they plan to seek bids for the GPS technology that could begin operation in four to six months. One company, Florida-based Pro Tech, said it was interested in the California market. The tracking equipment can be monitored hourly at a cost of $9 to $10 per parolee or once a day at a cost of about $4 per parolee, according to a state Senate analysis of a measure that would have set up a pilot program in San Diego County. The legislation failed in committee last year. |
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