Police and federal agents struggle to keep track of offenders—with a growing number of predators, this is proving to be increasingly difficult. Now more than ever, your school must be vigilant to protect students from sexual predators.
Offenders on probation and parole drain resources of probation officers who struggle with technology challenges. With the explosion of social networking sites, cell phones, and gaming systems that have online features (e.g. The Playstation Portable can download and view images from pornographic sites), it's becoming more and more difficult to keep track of predators—especially when most of these resources don't require real names.
"When a sex offender has access to hundreds of tools, how can we possibly keep up with this explosion is beyond me," said Leonard Sipes, spokesman for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency in the District.
Federal child sexual exploitation prosecutions are up 147% since 2002, with no sign of abating as President Obama continues the focus on crimes against children that began with the Bush administration. In fact, the Justice Department is hiring 81 more prosecutors for these cases.
Revenue-strapped states have been cutting their budgets for electronic monitoring of sexually violent predators. However, the federal budget this year rose from $16 million to $75 million.
Probation and parole officers use a variety of tools to help monitor sexual offenders. GPS devices, polygraph tests, home visits, and more recently, computer monitoring systems (these track the person's keystrokes) are the most common techniques used. However, these are only used while the person is being supervised—typically, three to five years. And, computer-monitoring programs can't capture what sexual predators do at all times—it's not difficult for them to log on at a library, a friend's house, or use a portable device that has Internet access.
In spite of limitations, experts say that computer-monitoring software is catching an increasing number of violations.
