Bill seeks GPS to track offenders
A proposal to use global positioning satellite technology to track the state's most dangerous sexual predators received solid support yesterday from legislators, judges, and Public Safety Secretary Edward A. Flynn.
The bill currently before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary would require that all so-called level-three sex offenders, those deemed the most dangerous and most likely to reoffend, be required to wear a monitoring device with a global positioning system as a condition of their probation or parole. At any time, officials said, the state has approximately 850 level-three offenders, as classified by the state Sex Offender Registry Board, on the streets.
Support for the measure has been driven largely by the case of a Woburn mother and daughter who were killed in January, allegedly by Michael J. Bizanowicz, a level-three offender who frequented their neighborhood.
"The key with the level-three guys is that they have a strong tendency to reoffend, and this could be a tool to assist us in making sure they don't," said Senator Robert Creedon, a Brockton Democrat and cochairman of the Judiciary Committee, which held a hearing on the bill yesterday.
Among those testifying in favor of the measure was Superior Court Chief Justice Suzanne V. DelVecchio, who conducted an inquiry into the Probation Department's handling of Bizanowicz after he was charged in the murders of Joanne Presti and her 12-year-old daughter Alyssa.
DelVecchio said the use of a GPS-based system could have yielded information about whether Bizanowicz was living in Lowell, as he had told authorities, or spending most of his time in Woburn, in violation of his probation.
The proposed system would allow state probation or parole officials to track a subject 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, to within a 4-foot radius. While admitting that such systems are invasive, DelVecchio said she believes they are constitutional.
Meanwhile, Flynn sent a letter yesterday to Creedon and Representative Eugene L. O'Flaherty, Democrat of Chelsea and the committee's House chairman, pledging the Romney administration's support for GPS tracking of level-three sex offenders.
"The use of such technology in states like Florida has yielded impressive results, and it is our hope that GPS tracking will act as a deterrent," Flynn wrote.
One cosponsor -- Representative David M. Nangle, Democrat of Lowell -- said that if the current bill becomes law, it could only be applied to the 25 percent of the state's current level-three offenders, those who are still on some sort of probation or parole. While the remaining level-three offenders are required to register with the state's Sex Offender Registry board, they could not be retroactively required to wear a GPS device, Nangle said.
Sponsors estimate that the GPS system, a wrist or ankle bracelet that costs about $12 per individual per day, would eventually cost the state about $4 million per year.
"But I don't think we can put a price on safety," said Nangle, who said he expects to meet later this month with House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran to talk about funding for the program. While there was little opposition to the proposal at yesterday's hearing, some civil liberties advocates said they are opposed.
William J. Leahy, chief counsel of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, called the proposal overkill, because the Legislature recently passed a law making it easier for prosecutors to lock up sex offenders on civil commitments and because of the effort by the Sex Offender Registry Board to post information about offenders on the Internet. CPCS has led the legal fight to block online publication of sex-offender information.
"It's not just overkill, but a false promise that you can be assured of safety," Leahy said. "The reality is that parents need to be vigilant and watch their children . . . My counsel to the Legislature would be to just slow down."
