Now we can argue if its a good idea or not, but sometimes extraneous factors can be set into the terms of a sentencing for a person convicted of a crime. There’s a lot of talk now about Michael Vick wanting a dog, despite it part of his sentencing for dog fighting and animal abuse that he no longer is allowed to own dogs. Often when a well-known celebrity gets caught for various crimes (most often drunk driving, or substance abuse) they are requested to do public service as part of their sentencing. On a funny note, one Christmas Season 3 small-time C-List Maine Celebrities got pinched for DWI when coming home from various Christmas parties. Part of their sentencing was for them to do a Jeopardy-style game show on alcohol consumption. I watched it as a teen, and I was very amused, and it took on more meaning when I realized they hadn’t done that by choice.
Just heard this story on the news.
Convicted sex offenders should not be punished for violating the terms of their probation if they can’t find a power outlet to charge their GPS monitoring devices because they’re homeless, the state’s highest court said today.
How about this for special conditions. Get a job, get a room, and keep your nose clean, or its back to the slam where you’ll get 3 hots and a cot, and will make lots of friends as all pederasts do in the clink.
This is just shameful. The GPS technology is one of those things used to make Rehabilitation EASIER for offenders. If they can’t make use of the technology well they can ride out the rest of their sentence in prison. Certainly wouldn’t hurt my feelings, or anybody out there who has kids.
Tho maybe it isn’t fair because the Mass Police don’t actually WATCH those things anyway.
Good grief.
a) If they’re so dangerous that the state needs to keep track of their whereabouts, they shouldn’t be out of jail in the first place.
b) If they absolutely must be let out of jail and their homelessness must be accommodated, the solution is simple. Set up a computer with a barcode scanner at each police station along with a set of GPS bracelets. Issue the bastards a photo ID and require them to check in at a specific police station every day. They trade in the bracelet they have on for a charged one, and the officer on duty at the desk simply scans the bracelets’ barcodes when they make the trade to update the system. If they don’t check in and trade bracelets, or they don’t have the special ID (or they have someone else’s ID, or someone else tries to check in using their ID and bracelet) they go back to jail for the remainder of their sentence, plus an added period for the probation violation.
Personally, I like your idea – make them get jobs and a real residence and stay clean, and if they can’t do that then lock ’em up.
Of course, any of these options would require actually putting people in jail for violating their probation, rather than simply extending the probation (or finding them guilty and revoking then re-suspending the remainder of their sentence – which makes no sense but happens with disgusting frequency).
In my town, a minor sex offender (if I remember correctly, consensual sex with a victim slightly underage at the time of the offense, who he was now married to) pretty much could not find a place he was legally allowed to live in our town, because schools are typically located in residential areas, and there was almost no affordable housing in our town anywhere else He wound up in trouble because his new home was too close to a seldom-used school-owned stadium–Miles away on streets or sidewalks, but if you climbed the levy and swam across the river it was within the prohibited distance. Even better, he was allowed to visit that home during the day when school was in session, but couldn’t spend the night, when the stadium was unused.
Many sex offender laws are based on Joan Peterson type logic, with nearly impossible, mostly irrelevant hoops to jump through. Either leave them in jail, or give them restrictions that are both relevant and feasible.
Yeah, a lot of those restrictions are ridiculous. If we’re that afraid they’ll re-offend, we need to either leave them in jail, or execute them, because they’re too dangerous to be allowed out in society.
Also, a lot of the offenses that trigger those restrictions shouldn’t, because they’re the type of offenses with a low-to-nonexistent recidivism rate – like the one you mentioned. I wonder if he could get the governor to grant him a pardon and get out from under the restrictions, since he’s married to the “victim” now?
Can’t charge a battery pack because they’re homeless? What, the local police station runs on Whale Oil?
Down in Miami, they have a whole homeless ‘town’ set up under a bridge for sex offenders, because said sex offenders cannot find a place they’re allowed to live because of the ridiculous restrictions that are placed on them. Essentially, any sex offense is a life sentence now, even for something that is similar to the circumstances Sevesteen mentions.
Frankly, I don’t understand how the laws they have now are legal, since it continues punishing far after the sentence is supposedly over.