Monitoring high-risk sex offenders with GPS

Abstract

In response to media attention and public demand, legislation increasingly mandates more stringent surveillance for sex offenders. This trend towards greater supervision resulted in the lifetime GPS monitoring of high-risk sex offenders (HRSO) in California. This study assesses the impact of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s GPS program for HRSOs by employing a quasi-experimental design. The treatment group was drawn from all HRSO who were released from prison and placed on GPS monitoring in California. To identify comparison individuals likely to have pretreatment risk characteristics similar to those in the treatment group, a propensity score matching procedure was performed. The final sample included 516 subjects equally divided between the treatment and control groups. Data was assessed using Cox proportional hazards survival analysis clustering participants by parole district. Results showed the GPS condition was associated with significantly fewer parole registration and arrest violations, arrests, and convictions. These results are discussed in relation to other electronic monitoring research, the policy implications for the increasing use of this technology, and its effectiveness in reducing crime, prison populations, and ensuring public safety.

Keywords:

• Electronic monitoring
• parole
• evaluation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Proposition 83, commonly referred to as Jessica’s Law, mandates that eligible offenders are placed on GPS supervision for life. However, CDCR, the agency responsible for implementing the law, does not have any jurisdiction over an offender after release from parole. The practical implication of this implementation strategy is that GPS supervision ends after release from parole.

2. Technically, the initial matching procedure resulted in a sample of 518 subjects. Subsequent analyses revealed that one subject was released from a juvenile placement into an adult placement and thus not immediately released into the community. This case and his matched pair were subsequently dropped from the analysis.

3. Some cost data was also obtained from the CDCR but is not included in this article.

4. Sex offender registration is a system in various states designed to allow government authorities to keep track of the residence and activities of sex offenders. The failure to comply with this registration process is technical violation of parole.

5. There were 35 subjects (19 control and 16 treatment) who had no prior sex offense arrest in their RAP sheets. Fifteen of these subjects committed the sex offense out of state. An additional four subjects were juveniles at the time of the crime and thus technically never were arrested for a sex-related crime. Another nine subjects were not arrested for a sex offense, but on further investigation the prosecutor added a sex-related charge. Finally, seven subjects displayed no prior sex-related offenses yet are required to register as sex offenders. These cases were attributed to missing data.

6. A decision rule was used to categorize program fidelity into high, average, and poor. High equals above 75%. Average is 50–74%. Poor is less than 50%.

7. This study tracks only custody events that are under the supervision of CDCR. Episodes in a local jail do not fall under the purview of the CDCR and thus are not accounted for in the analysis.