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well, this certainly makes me terrified enough to take a shit right where i'm sitting.
Wisconsin sex offenders face lifelong tracking
besides the fact that sexual assault and molestation charges can vary in definition and enforcement from one jurisdiction to another (a high school senior who is dating a sophomore and gets a hand job from her in the bathroom during the prom... is that a sex offender? depends largely on whether or not the district attorney is planning on running for a local congressional office in the future, i'd say) i have a huge problem with the increasing notion that somehow criminal status in the justice system is not a binary (or trinary) matter.
deep breath, calm & clear enunciation...
in a free society a person either IS a criminal being punished by the justice system or they HAVE CONCLUDED their punishment and are a free citizen again. i recognize the whole matter of "parole" but i simply define this as still being recognized as a criminal who is undergoing punishment... restrictions of liberty and so forth are still in play. however, once a sentence has been fully served (and all parole has concluded) you are NO LONGER part of the criminal justice system (in my idealized reality, which i admit does not parallel completely with our own) and therefore CANNOT be legally subjected to such infringements of liberty
the heart of my argument here is a slippery-slope concern. once we start dividing a person's criminal status into a myriad of small designations (incarcerated, paroled, monitored, watch-listed, documented, etc) there is no certainty as to what a person's future is at the hands of the state. as it stands right now (as far as i know) parole is a relatively flexible matter. not all criminals are given the same parole terms (just as not all those who commit the same crime are given equal prison terms)... i am shocked and appalled by the possibility of one criminal in the future winding up with an all-inclusive stretch (of the above hypothetical categories) lasting 30 or 40 years while someone else might be out of the system and have their rights completely back in only 10.
this multiple category breakdown can lead to a great deal of arbitrariness in sentence length... and if governments become willing to invest in invasive technologies (like the GPS proposal here) instead of actually paying police and prison workers (to keep people locked up and keep tabs on parolees) we will slide down that slope even further. GPS, by its relatively cheap and versatile nature, can be easily adapted to provide many automated layers of control and permission.
imagine auto-generated e-mail alerts to these people... "hello, this is a reminder that today is the 3rd of september and therefore your radius of permission has extended to 50 miles from your home, provided you return home after any 3 day stay outside of your green zone unless it is a holiday weekend" etc etc. instead of making their parole and monitored life restrictions concrete... there could even be vagary and blurring of lines there... "hello, this is an email to notify you that our system detected that you strayed 500 yards outside of your yellow zone for more than two hours on wednesday. please note that subsequent infractions of this nature will result in a reduction of your permission radius by 5 miles" etc etc.
computers and code work in cut-and-dry, black-or-white logic. switches are either on or off... however, computer-aided bureaucracy increases vagueness and impersonal decision making by orders of magnitude. i predict it would become increasingly difficult to comply with directives and it would take increasingly long periods of time to get one's life back together upon release from prison with such a system in place.
of course, i think all of this is overshadowed by the larger issue which is, as mentioned above... in an ostensibly-free society citizens are either incarcerated or their not. they're either criminals or they're free. the state doesn't get a bunch of middle-of-the-road rest stops to sort matters out. pay the expense to keep people behind bars until it's appropriate for them to be out, then leave them the fuck alone.
[EDIT: this particular article discusses GPS (which i assume is your typical "out on bail" bracelt-based technology) but i'd be happy to hear people's comments about the use of RFID for such tracking. after all, it was proposed recently that we RFID tag and track immegrants and guest workers. once something is foisted upon a marginalized populace, it's that much easier to press it upon the rest of the population, as well. that is, of course, unless the rest of the population is already asking to have their rights taken away in exchange for shiny toys and meaningless entertainments. (i.e. - this cartoon)
Wisconsin sex offenders face lifelong tracking
Wisconsin has enacted a law that requires paroled child molesters to wear a Global Positioning System tracking device for at least 20 years. "Expanded GPS will help law enforcement know exactly where these people are every minute of every day," said Gov. Jim Doyle as he signed the bill into law Monday in Madison.
deep breath, calm & clear enunciation...
in a free society a person either IS a criminal being punished by the justice system or they HAVE CONCLUDED their punishment and are a free citizen again. i recognize the whole matter of "parole" but i simply define this as still being recognized as a criminal who is undergoing punishment... restrictions of liberty and so forth are still in play. however, once a sentence has been fully served (and all parole has concluded) you are NO LONGER part of the criminal justice system (in my idealized reality, which i admit does not parallel completely with our own) and therefore CANNOT be legally subjected to such infringements of liberty
the heart of my argument here is a slippery-slope concern. once we start dividing a person's criminal status into a myriad of small designations (incarcerated, paroled, monitored, watch-listed, documented, etc) there is no certainty as to what a person's future is at the hands of the state. as it stands right now (as far as i know) parole is a relatively flexible matter. not all criminals are given the same parole terms (just as not all those who commit the same crime are given equal prison terms)... i am shocked and appalled by the possibility of one criminal in the future winding up with an all-inclusive stretch (of the above hypothetical categories) lasting 30 or 40 years while someone else might be out of the system and have their rights completely back in only 10.
this multiple category breakdown can lead to a great deal of arbitrariness in sentence length... and if governments become willing to invest in invasive technologies (like the GPS proposal here) instead of actually paying police and prison workers (to keep people locked up and keep tabs on parolees) we will slide down that slope even further. GPS, by its relatively cheap and versatile nature, can be easily adapted to provide many automated layers of control and permission.
imagine auto-generated e-mail alerts to these people... "hello, this is a reminder that today is the 3rd of september and therefore your radius of permission has extended to 50 miles from your home, provided you return home after any 3 day stay outside of your green zone unless it is a holiday weekend" etc etc. instead of making their parole and monitored life restrictions concrete... there could even be vagary and blurring of lines there... "hello, this is an email to notify you that our system detected that you strayed 500 yards outside of your yellow zone for more than two hours on wednesday. please note that subsequent infractions of this nature will result in a reduction of your permission radius by 5 miles" etc etc.
computers and code work in cut-and-dry, black-or-white logic. switches are either on or off... however, computer-aided bureaucracy increases vagueness and impersonal decision making by orders of magnitude. i predict it would become increasingly difficult to comply with directives and it would take increasingly long periods of time to get one's life back together upon release from prison with such a system in place.
of course, i think all of this is overshadowed by the larger issue which is, as mentioned above... in an ostensibly-free society citizens are either incarcerated or their not. they're either criminals or they're free. the state doesn't get a bunch of middle-of-the-road rest stops to sort matters out. pay the expense to keep people behind bars until it's appropriate for them to be out, then leave them the fuck alone.
[EDIT: this particular article discusses GPS (which i assume is your typical "out on bail" bracelt-based technology) but i'd be happy to hear people's comments about the use of RFID for such tracking. after all, it was proposed recently that we RFID tag and track immegrants and guest workers. once something is foisted upon a marginalized populace, it's that much easier to press it upon the rest of the population, as well. that is, of course, unless the rest of the population is already asking to have their rights taken away in exchange for shiny toys and meaningless entertainments. (i.e. - this cartoon)
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