One in every four GPS devices used to track serious criminals released in Los Angeles County has proved to be faulty, according to a probation department audit — allowing violent felons to roam undetected for days or, in some cases, weeks. The problems included batteries that wouldn’t hold a charge and defective electronics that generated excessive false alarms. One felon, county officials said, had to have his GPS monitor replaced 11 times over a year; for five days during the 45-day audit period, his whereabouts were unknown. Full Article Related: Audit:…
Read MoreMonth: December 2013
ID: E-mail Notifications Feature Added to Idaho State Sex Offender Registry System
Citizens can now elect to receive e-mail notifications when a sex offender in their neighborhood moves to a new location. When interested persons register for this new service, they can specify the given radius of the area they desire to keep tabs on. Additionally, if a person is interested in being notified when a particular registrant moves, there is a link provided under the picture on each registrant’s page that reads, “Track Registrant.” When the user clicks on the link, they will be asked to provide the e-mail address where notifications…
Read MorePedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation, Canadian Experts Say
Doctors in Canada say pedophilia is a sexual orientation that is partly wired in the brain and can’t be changed. After a decade of research, Dr. James Cantor and his team at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health say some people are born pedophiles, meaning they are primarily sexually attracted to children. Researchers say one to five percent of all men are pedophiles. Full Article
Read MoreMO: Missouri Supreme Court rules against sex offenders
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s Supreme Court on Tuesday sided against three men previously convicted of a sex crime and facing a new criminal charge under a law making it illegal for them to be near certain parks. The cases are the most recent to focus on a portion of the Missouri Constitution barring retrospective and ex post facto laws. The high court ruled last month the ban on retrospective laws does not apply to criminal statutes. A divided Missouri Supreme Court concluded Tuesday the parks restriction is a…
Read MoreCT: Problems With Drug, Sex Offender Zones
Do crime-free zones around schools and other places where children gather actually protect children? The question will be aired in the next session of the General Assembly because of two proposals, one that seeks to reduce the size of drug-free zones around schools and another that would create zones around schools where sex offenders couldn’t live. The Connecticut Sentencing Commission has unanimously approved a recommendation to scale back the state’s drug-free zone from 1,500 feet to 200 feet of school property. Meanwhile, two legislators are proposing a bill that would…
Read MoreHe’s Not a Sex Offender, Married Man Says
VISALIA, Calif. (CN) – A man required to register as a sex offender for life for having consensual relations with his now-wife 24 years ago – when he was 19 and she was 17 – asked a state court to remove that obligation so he can get on with his life. In 1989, police busted ___ ___ ___, then 19, for having “consensual, voluntary relations” with his 17-year-old girlfriend. He pleaded guilty to a single count of oral copulation with a minor. That charge requires mandatory, lifetime registration as a…
Read MoreGangsters to Greyhounds: The Past, Present and Future of Offender Registration
Contrary to popular belief, offender registries are not a recent phenomenon. Offender registries are government-controlled systems that track the movements and other activities of certain persons with criminal convictions. While today they are most commonly used for sex offenders, registries have been adopted since the 1930s to regulate persons convicted of a wide variety of offenses including embezzlement, arson, and drug crimes. Early registries were widely criticized as ineffective and overly punitive, and many were eliminated through litigation or legislative repeals. Others simply fell into disuse over the course of the 20th century. Now, there is a growing…
Read MoreUK: More than 100 sex offenders use human rights ruling to get names taken off register
More than 100 of the country’s most dangerous sex attackers – including paedophiles and violent rapists – have had their names secretly removed from the Sex Offenders’ Register, it has been revealed. The criminals have used a human rights ruling to remove themselves from the list, arguing that they no longer pose a threat to the public. Full Article Related: Human rights victory for rapists and paedophiles, Sex Offenders and the Human Rights Act
Read MoreNew Google Glass App Can Recognize Up to 450,000 Sex Offenders so You Know When to Run
Though Google has banned facial recognition from Google Glass, one company is throwing that to the wind and is doing their own, anyway—and it’s specializing in sex offenders. NameTag, the Nevada-based company, has developed a Glass app that can recognize up to 450,000 sex offenders, and pulls its data from FacialNetwork.com. “I believe that this will make online dating and offline social interactions much safer and give us a far better understanding of the people around us,” said NameTag’s founder Kevin Tussy. “It’s much easier to meet interesting new people…
Read MoreMN: Education, empathy useful for legislators weighing sex offender program
Margretta Dwyer understands well the moral, legal and practical implications of dealing with sex offenders. But she hopes that Minnesota legislators working to revamp the civil commitment program also consider something else: Empathy. “I’m not saying sex offending is OK. I’m not saying be easy on them,” Dwyer said this week. “I’m saying there are ways we can help that are better than what we’re doing. Education, support, compassion.” Full Article
Read MoreNY:15 sex offenders charged with unregistered email accounts
Fifteen registered sex offenders were arrested this week for allegedly using email accounts on social networking sites like Facebook without first registering those accounts with the state Sex Offender Registry, officials announced Thursday. Under E-Stop legislation passed in 2008, these Oneida County sex offenders were charged with felonies and issued tickets to appear in Whitestown Town Court following a sweep by the Oneida County Child Advocacy Center, New York State Police, the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office and police departments in Kirkland, Utica and Rome. While the arrests do not suggest…
Read MoreLawmakers, Credit Card Companies Take Aim at Mug Shot Websites
For people who find their faces splashed across mug shot websites, even if they were later found innocent of the crimes, it can haunt them for the rest of their lives. Now, lawmakers and even credit card companies are stepping in to help protect people from further humiliation. Owners of mug shot websites will post the photos released by police departments with the person’s name and information. Many then make money by charging people, sometimes hundreds of dollars, to have a mug shot removed. Dozens of these sites exist and can…
Read More25 to life for failing to reregister as sex offender
___ ___ was a 41-year-old man with a long criminal record and a low IQ when he left Oakland in late 1999 and bedded down at a homeless shelter in San Mateo. Police found him there in March 2000 and discovered he had failed to reregister as a sex offender as required by law — once a year, within five days of his birthday, and within five days of a change of address. After a San Mateo County judge barred a psychologist from testifying about ____ low mental capacity, a…
Read MoreWhere Is the Outcry in a World Gone Mad?
I am old enough to remember the world before it went mad. I read about a child–a baby, really, six–suspended from school for sexual harassment after he kissed a little girl in his class on the hand. Yes, he had apparently given her attention before, and some indications are it was unwanted attention, and correction of behavior may well have been warranted, but SEXUAL HARASSMENT at six? The school has apparently removed that specific language from his record after an outcry that swept almost from shore to shore. Thank God we are…
Read MoreCT: A law to restrict who can live by schools, day cares
… “The last thing a parent should have to worry about when they send their child to school is whether a depraved sex offender is lurking around the corner from the jungle gym or classroom,” Rep. Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said when announcing the proposal last week. Full Article
Read MoreNY: I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System
Ten years ago, when I started my career as an assistant district attorney in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, I viewed the American criminal justice system as a vital institution that protected society from dangerous people. I once prosecuted a man for brutally attacking his wife with a flashlight, and another for sexually assaulting a waitress at a nightclub. I believed in the system for good reason. But in between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids…
Read MoreO.C. supervisors reject Megan’s Law-style website for vicious dogs
Orange County won’t be creating a Megan’s Law-style website for dangerous dogs any time soon. The county Board of Supervisors had been considering creating an online database listing the addresses of homes where dangerous dogs are kept, but on Tuesday a majority of supervisors said they don’t support such a site. “I think that whole area needs a lot more study before we go in that direction,” said Supervisor Patricia Bates. … … Bates said she worried it might be difficult for owners to get their dogs removed from the site even…
Read MoreFL: Lawmakers file sex predator legislation
Florida senators filed a package of bills to crack down on violent sex predators Tuesday, promising to make sex offender reform the centerpiece of the upcoming legislative session. The senators propose longer prison sentences, stricter community monitoring and a wider pool of offenders who can be confined after their criminal sentences end. Lawmakers began working on the legislation after a Sun Sentinel investigation in August revealed that nearly 600 sex offenders committed new sex crimes after being reviewed under Florida’s predator law and set free. The law allows the state to…
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