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A High-Tech Parable: California Uses GPS to Track Parolees, Then Ignores It

Wednesday, 16 June 2010 15:42

Several years ago, California decided to require high-risk parolees, such as gang members and sex offenders, to wear GPS monitoring devices. The idea was to relay location information to law enforcement to ensure that the convicts stay where they’re supposed to. Unfortunately, the state often misses those alerts, making the devices both a lesson in the pitfalls of technology management and a massive exercise in largely useless spending.

industry.bnet.com/technology/10008826/a-high-tech-parable-california-uses-gps-on-parolees-then-ignores-it/

In 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger first supported a pilot program to track 500 sex offenders and alert authorities if one of them wandered too far from home. California voters passed a ballot initiative, nicknamed Jessica’s Law, in 2006 that prohibited sex offenders from being within 2,000 feet of a school or park and required all offenders to wear monitoring devices for the rest of their lives. By this year, the state wanted to expand monitoring to a thousand paroled gang members at a cost of $9,500 a year for each one.

Killing Witches in Africa. Again.

Tuesday, 15 June 2010 09:33

Killing Witches in Africa. Again.

Posted on: June 15, 2010 9:16 AM, by Ed Brayton

Here's the preview video for a documentary about the insanity going on in parts of Africa, where Pentecostal churches in particular are encouraging people to kill their children on the grounds that they are possessed by demons or witches. This is not a small problem; tens of thousands of children have been victimized in this way.

Balko was moved by this documentary to donate money to the Child's Right and Rehabilitation Network, which runs homes for the child victims in Nigeria. So was I. I think you will be too. Never forget that false beliefs can have very,very dangerous results.

Watch Saving Africa's Witch Children in Activism & Non-Profit | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh

Supreme Court rules sex offender registration law does not apply retroactively

Tuesday, 08 June 2010 13:48

Supreme Court rules sex offender registration law does not apply retroactively
Hillary Stemple at 11:49 AM ET

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Tuesday ruled [opinion, PDF] in Carr v. United States [Cornell LII backgrounder, JURIST report] that the failure to register provision [18 USC § 2250] of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) does not apply retroactively to offenses occurring before SORNA's enactment. Authoring the opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor reversed the lower court ruling after reviewing the statutory language stating, "That § 2250 sets forth the travel requirement in the present tense ("travels") rather than in the past or present perfect ("traveled" or "has traveled") reinforces the conclusion that pre-enactment travel falls outside the statute's compass." Justice Anthony Scalia wrote separately, concurring in part and dissenting in part. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in dissent stating that it "hobbles" an important part of SORNA. He was joined in his dissent by Justices Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The court agreed to hear the case [JURIST report] in order to reconcile a split in the reading of the statute between the Seventh and Tenth Circuit Courts. The court was also asked to address the ex post facto [US Constitution Article I § 3] nature of the statute, but found it unnecessary to do so in this case.

Groundbreaking study of sex offender life courses

Friday, 04 June 2010 21:07

Groundbreaking study of sex offender life courses

Challenge to actuarials: 4 distinct trajectories ID'd

Actuarial tools to predict offenders' future risk are all the rage. They provide a veneer of science in that on average their simple formulas work somewhat better than the flip of a coin. But a bit of sleight of hand is involved. They work only by lumping everyone together, making the vast differences among individuals with similar risk scores magically disappear. Thus, they say little about the risk of the specific offender standing in court awaiting judgment.

In addition to masking differences between individuals, actuarial risk assessment tools such as the Static-99 and the MnSOST-R ignore changes within an individual over time. As offenders age, they tend to rack up more arrests, which are scored as historical risk factors that elevate risk. But paradoxically, as men reach their 40s their days of crime are numbered. Many actuarially minded evaluators show a remarkable ignorance of the robust criminological literature on desistance, viewing sex offenders through an insular and mechanistic lens of history as destiny.

News Releases Attorney General Statement in Response to Ohio Supreme Court Decision in State v. Bodyke

Thursday, 03 June 2010 20:01

News Releases

Attorney General Statement in Response to Ohio Supreme Court Decision in State v. Bodyke

6/3/2010

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) – In a narrowly tailored decision today, the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated two provisions of the Ohio Adam Walsh Act on separation-of-powers grounds. The act was passed by the General Assembly in July 2007 and became effective on Jan. 1, 2008. In response to the court’s decision in the case of State v. Bodyke, Attorney General Richard Cordray released the following statement:

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