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GPS Monitoring of High-Risk Sex Offenders Evaluation of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s San Diego County Pilot Program. Jesse Jannetta, Research Specialist Center for Evidence-Based Corrections, UC Irvine March 30, 2006.
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GPS Monitoring of High-Risk Sex OffendersEvaluation of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s San Diego County Pilot Program Jesse Jannetta, Research Specialist Center for Evidence-Based Corrections, UC Irvine March 30, 2006
Applying Evidence to Sex Offender Management • A subset of sex offenders is a particularly high risk to sexually re-offend • CDCR supervised 1,906 High Risk Sex Offender (HRSO) parolees as of January 1, 2005 • These offenders may commit extremely damaging crimes of particular concern to the public • Global Positioning System (GPS) monitoring is a fast-proliferating but little evaluated tool for sex offender supervision
CDCR Will Have 500 GPS Units in Place Statewide by July, 2006 Program Goals • Reduce sexual and violent criminal behavior of HRSO parolees • Improve detection of violations of parole conditions and patterns of risky behavior through enhanced supervision of HRSO parolees • Increase HRSO parolee compliance with conditions of parole • Identify or eliminate parolees as suspects in new crimes by sharing GPS information with law enforcement agencies • Develop partnerships with local law enforcement to reduce crime
CDCR Will Have 500 GPS Units in Place Statewide by July, 2006 Program Components • Reduction of caseloads for GPS agents to 20:1 • Screening of HRSO parolees to determine their risk to re-offend, and targeting GPS monitoring to the highest risk parolees • Enrollment and orientation of parolees into the parameters of GPS monitoring • Integration of active GPS monitoring information into the intensive supervision regime • Synthesis of parolee GPS and law enforcement crime data
CEBC Evaluating the GPS San Diego County Pilot • San Diego pilot placed the first California parolees on GPS in June of 2005 • 80 GPS-monitored HRSO parolees in San Diego County • Research team meets regularly with the San Diego GPS implementation team
Research Questions • What motivated the GPS HRSO program/what is the program design? • What are the characteristics of the offenders who participated in the pilot/how do they compare with other HRSO offenders in San Diego and the statewide sex offender parolee population? • What were the implementation experiences? • What impact did GPS have on system and offender behavior? • What were the costs of the pilot program?
The Center Will Produce Three Research Products • Program Model Description • Implementation Analysis • Outcome Analysis
Information on Implementation Obtained from Multiple Sources • Interviews • Supervising parole agents • Division of Adult Parole Operations staff • Sex offender treatment providers • Law enforcement • Vendor representative • Parolee focus groups • Descriptive analysis of parolees placed on GPS compared to San Diego County and California sex offender parolees
Outcomes for GPS Group Will Be Compared with Outcomes for Non-GPS Parolees • Treatment Group • 94 HRSO parolees placed on GPS monitoring in San Diego County from June through November of 2005 • Control Group • 116 parolees on HRSO caseloads in San Diego County from June-November of 2005, but not placed on GPS monitoring during that interval • One year observation period, concluding December 1, 2006
Preliminary GPS Pilot Implementation Observations • GPS information is labor-intensive to utilize • Program effectiveness is impeded by shortcomings of ancillary technologies • Bargaining unit participation preserves programmatic flexibility
Evaluation Next Steps Involve Answering Two Key Data Questions • Can the data on the relevant parolee characteristics and outcomes be abstracted from existing data? • Are the identified treatment and comparison groups sufficiently similar?