As state expands monitoring to paroled gang members, critics question cost, effectiveness of satellite tracking
CRIMEJanuary 24, 2010|By Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff WriterCalifornia will strap GPS anklets on 1,000 recently paroled gang members this year, state officials said, hoping to keep them out of trouble by limiting their movements while gathering intelligence in case they return to their old habits.
The move expands what is already the nation’s biggest Global Positioning System monitoring program of convicts, coming three years after voters required satellite tracking of more than 7,000 paroled sex offenders.
It also invites added scrutiny from critics of GPS monitoring, who contend that the technology has not been adequately studied in California to see if it cuts crime, lowers recidivism and justifies its cost: about $9,500 annually per parolee.
The gang program will not result in the early release of inmates. It will equip “the worst of the worst” recent parolees with GPS devices, said state Parole Administrator Denise Milano, replacing scattered pilot programs that have tracked as many as 160 gang members at a time.
Some parolees to East Bay
Fifty parole agents will handle caseloads of 20 gang members each, Milano said. The state has not yet decided which counties to choose, she said, although agents in Alameda County said they expected to handle at least one caseload.
“GPS use is something that’s here to stay,” said Gordon Hinkle, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which supervises 107,000 parolees. “We’ve never claimed GPS is going to be the answer to all of our problems, but it’s an additional tool we’ve found very useful.”
The state is hoping to exploit a technology that has revolutionized how people navigate everyday life. Particularly intriguing is the automation offered by GPS: Authorities can, for example, enforce a ban on convicts leaving their homes during certain hours by creating an electronic bubble. Breaching the bubble would activate an alert.
Dots on a map
The potency of GPS is eye-opening. Turn on a computer, as parole agent Brett Everidge did on a recent morning in Oakland, and there they are: 300 rapists, molesters and flashers in Alameda County represented by small dots on a map, or arrows if they’re on the move.
All the paroled sex offenders on Everidge’s screen were fitted with GPS anklets because of voters’ passage of Proposition 83 in 2006, which also barred the parolees from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.