Jessica’s Law, the ballot measure to harness sex offenders, began eight years ago with a promise – one that parents whose daughters have disappeared, as well as law enforcement experts, now say lulled California into a false sense of security.

The voter-approved statute promised to keep paroled sex offenders in check, in part, by forcing them to wear Global Positioning Satellite bracelets. Yet two of those offenders were wearing GPS bracelets when, according to prosecutors, they killed Kianna Jackson, 20, and three other women in Orange County.

“It is a false comfort … for people to know these guys have bracelets and they won’t do something, even though we know that’s not the case,” said Kathy Menzies, the mother of Jackson, whose body is believed to be buried in a landfill after she was kidnapped and thrown in a dumpster.

One of the main advocates of Jessica’s Law, former prosecutor Steve Ipsen, who signed the argument in the California Voter Information Guide, today concedes he and others oversimplified the effectiveness of GPS in the guide.

“It’s very difficult to take a complex area of legislation and in a few words say the intent. If you are technically accurate it could be dry and not read,” Ipsen said. “The language was just to simplify and sell.

“The campaign was overly simplistic, but it’s impossible not to be.”

Indeed, the April arrests of high-risk offenders Steven Dean Gordon and Franc Cano, accused of killing women while wearing GPS bracelets, has reignited the debate over Jessica’s Law.

“GPS monitoring could have saved Jessica Lunsford’s life,” promised the voter information guide, referring to the 9-year-old Florida victim for whom the measure was named.

“Tragically, it’s too late to save Jessica Lunsford,” continued the voter guide. “But it’s not too late to prevent countless other children from being attacked and murdered by sexual predators.”

Today, California spends $8.6 million a year to fit high-risk, paroled sex offenders with GPS bracelets. But exactly what voters get for their money remains unclear. That’s OK, Ipsen says.

“If you’re going to waste money, waste money protecting your kids to the best of your ability,” he said.

California’s not alone. At least 39 states have enacted electronic monitoring for sex offenders – states where people on GPS have committed more violent crimes.

In New York, David Renz cut off his GPS device last year and killed a librarian who was trying to keep him from raping a 10-year-old girl.

In Arkansas last year, Leontarius Reed, 16, was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl in a men’s washroom while wearing a GPS ankle bracelet after shooting a businessman.

In Washington five years ago, Maurice Clemmons cut off his GPS bracelet and shot and killed four police officers before being killed in a police shootout.

Nationally, statutes based on Jessica’s Law have failed in that they try to apply a one-size-fits-all solution to a problem that needs to be treated individually, experts say. The various forms of Jessica’s Law are based on one type of perpetrator, say experts.

“Most people think of people jumping out of the bushes, the stranger danger, which just isn’t the case,” said Katie Gotch, spokesperson for the international Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers in Beaverton, Ore. “Laws or policies perpetuated by the stranger danger myth are not effective.”

Data shows that just 5 percent of child sexual abductions are by strangers, experts say.

“Everyone on GPS for life, that’s not effective,” Gotch said. “You have individuals who are very low-risk – the 19-year-old who had the inappropriate though voluntary relationship with his 15-year-old girlfriend.

“What (advocates of Jessica’s Law are) talking about is creating instability.”

A huge red flag

Stripped of all the rhetoric, GPS devices are only as dependable as the offender wearing them and the officers supervising them.

Batteries must be regularly charged by the wearer. Frequencies can be blocked, indoors and outdoors. Monitors must send the information from the GPS to a parole agent. Alerts to agents can be ignored or allowed to pile up. Offenders can cut off or simply ignore their bracelets.

In the case of Gordon and Cano, the pair twice took off their bracelets and fled the state, first to Alabama and then to Las Vegas. Each man served a few extra months in jail for the escapes.

“That’s like a vacation,” said state Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber.

Nielsen compared absconding to a “huge red flag” that should have clued authorities to Gordon and Franco’s alleged propensity for violence.

While most law enforcement experts agree that GPS is a worthwhile tool, they differ on whether it can be used instead of incarceration for low-level offenders.

Some, like Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, argue that convicted criminals should serve their full time in jail. Others contend GPS is like a low-cost jail cell.

“It does make the public safer. Does it make it 100 percent safe? No. But it’s far better than nothing,” said George Runner, a former California state senator who led the push for Jessica’s Law.

Menzies said the answer to keeping the public safe is by keeping sex predators in jail for life – not by tracking their whereabouts in the hopes of controlling their behavior.

“People are still offending even though you have all these laws,”said Menzies, “What’s up with that?”

Studies generally predict good things for GPS monitoring. But even the most optimistic reports raise concerns.

A study two years ago produced for the National Institute of Justice, cautioned: “The public may not understand the limitations of the technology but assume it is a panacea.

“In truth, GPS is a tool – and one that can fail.”

That study concluded that GPS reduced the number of high-risk sex offenders committing another crime by 12 percent.

But a 2007 UC Irvine study found no difference in recidivism rates over an 18-month period among nearly 100 parolees both with and without the bracelet.

No where to live

Besides requiring GPS, Jessica’s law in California and other states banned registered sex offenders from living near schools, parks and other places where children congregate.

Those restrictions have turned sex offenders into transients – making them more prone to reoffend or violate the terms of their parole, increasing the danger to the public, experts now say.

Police also have a harder time tracking the movements of homeless sex offenders, adding to an already large workload.

“While (housing restrictions) might seem reasonable, research studies have found no connection between offenders’ residences and the commission of new crimes,” said a new report by California’s Office of the Inspector General. “Researchers have found reasons to challenge the residency restrictions on the basis that it is neither efficacious nor practical for anyone.”

Following the passage of Jessica’s Law in California, the number of homeless sex offenders ballooned from 88 to 1,056 in less than two years.

Iowa in 2001 was among the early states to pass housing restrictions for sexual offenders, and quickly found it doesn’t work.

In 2006, about the same time Jessica’s Law was being passed in California, the Iowa County Attorney’s Association issued a statement calling for the housing restrictions to be relaxed. The association said police had lost track of an alarming number of registered sex offenders because they were homeless.

“We had people sleeping at rest stops along the highways,” said Corwin Ritchie, executive director of the attorney’s association. “You don’t expect county attorneys, prosecutors, to be on the side of sex offenders. But it was a bad law.”

Ritchie said statutes like Jessica’s Law with their housing restrictions have a superficial appeal to a scared public.

“It sounds good, but it didn’t really do anything to protect people, there’s no evidence that people will only reoffend within 2,000 feet from where they live. It did nothing for public safety,” Ritchie said.

Dr. Jill Levenson, a national expert on social work, said the variations on Jessica’s Law don’t work because they are “based on statistically improbable events,” such as stranger abductions.

“Unfortunately, we don’t always pass laws with a good understanding of what the research tells us,” said Levenson, an associate professor at Barry University School of Social Work in Florida. “Many of these (laws) are based on myths – they’re all compulsive sex fiends; they’re all untreatable and insatiable – and we know that is not supported by the data.”

Ipsen said voters are not so naïve as to believe that GPS monitoring would deter all sex offenders from repeating their crimes.

“I don’t think anyone has the impression that it would stop molestation. I think people understood that it would prevent some,” said Ipsen, who is now a victims’ rights attorney.

“The guys who really want to molest – a tracking device won’t stop them.”

Contact the writer: [email protected]

 

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