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| New System Alerting Parole Officers of Parolees' Arrests Coming |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 09/29/2003 |
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A Kansas system automatically alerting parole officers of their parolees' arrests is expected to be operational by year's end, four years after the brutal murder that prompted it. The new system will send an electronic alert, probably an e-mail, to a parole officer if one of his parolee's is apprehended, said Gordon Lansford, director of the Kansas Criminal Justice Information System. But for the new system to work, more law enforcement agencies will have to join the Criminal Justice Information System, Lansford said. About two-thirds of the state's law enforcement agencies, mostly small police departments, have not joined the free system, he said. Currently, officers rely on less systematic checks, like a visual scan of arrest lists, or on parolees themselves, to notify them of an arrest. Sometimes an arrest goes unnoticed. That's what happened in 1998, when Wichita parolee Stanley Elms was arrested on a drunken driving charge and released from the Sedgwick County jail. Parole officers apparently missed Elms' name on an arrest roster. Three weeks later, while on a four-day drug binge, he raped and murdered next-door neighbor Regina Gray, authorities say. He's now on death row. If his parole officer had known about the DUI arrest, Elms' supervision could have been increased and he could have been tested for drugs. After Gray's death, the Kansas Department of Corrections said it hoped to have an automated alert system in place by the beginning of 1999. But assembling the technology has taken more time than expected, said Kyle Smith, spokesman for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, one of the agencies involved in the project. |
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