SACRAMENTO — Electronic monitoring was supposed to help Los Angeles County deal with the influx of thousands of felons moved out of California’s prison system to ease overcrowding. The nation’s largest probation department strapped GPS ankle monitors on the highest-risk of those convicts, expecting the satellite receivers to keep tabs on where they spent their days and nights, and therefore keep the public safe.
Instead, agents are drowning in a flood of meaningless data, masking alarms that could signal real danger. County probation officers are inundated with alerts, and at times received as many as 1,000 a day. Most of the warnings mean little: a blocked signal or low battery. Full Article
I’ve already written Ms St John an email. Note that she starts out by explaining that the overwhelming number of offenders wearing GPS devices is due to the Governor being forced to release inmates to ease prison overcrowding, then uses a murder committed by a man “facing child pornography charges” to inject some fear, sex, and hysteria into her article. This man was not released from prison, he hadn’t even been charged according to her article. And I don’t think any sex offenders are getting an early release. But we all know that sex and violence sells. It also appears to me that her article is pushing for more jails and prisons, helping to sustain the very profitable “prison industry.”
We all need to make comments to this article. The comments sections are flooded with fear and misinformation. One commenter wanted the GPS devises to be monitored by the public. What idiots! A Public Policy Institute report to the Senate claims there is no significant affect of realignment on crime. In fact, in LA County, violent crime went down.
Just posted a comment, and it was not deleted yet….
I used another name on the LA Times article. If they had deleted my comment, I would have contacted the paper and/ or writer to let them know that if they make something public they need to be open to all comments, positive, negative, indifferent. Everybody has a different opinion, and that is what makes us unique. Right or wrong is just a perception. Being open to any opinion is what makes this world go around. Any form of media should be used to differing opinions.
These Orwellian contraptions make totalitarians drool. Now their drowning in it.
The GPS tracking devices are not working properly? The government is spending taxpayer money on this and it is serving no useful purpose? The GPS devices are wasting the time of the parole officers with gazillions of false messages? I don’t see why any of this is a problem. The GPS devices and parole itself (with only a few exceptions) are a total waste of time and money.