Efforts by probation and parole officers to improve their public image took a big hit with the 18-year abduction of Jaycee Lee Dugard in California and the critical report issued in early November by an inspector general in California.
Defendant Phillip Garrido, a sex offender, was visited periodically by a parole officer, but it took nearly two decades to catch on to the fact that he had abducted the then-11-year-old Dugard and later fathered two children with her.
Granted that it was a parole officer who finally discovered the scheme this summer, why did it take so long?
Experts say that parole officers should be making spot checks on their clients periodically, including thorough searches of their living conditions. Some places use polygraphs, although it is not clear that submitting Garrido to a polygraph exam would have uncovered his scheme.
Veteran parole officers know that sex offenders typically are “manipulative and secretive,” says Bill Burrell, former director of adult probation in New Jersey, who now trains officials. “They don’t want people looking around” to find violations of their release conditions. Agents appear to have done only superficial checking on Garrido, Burrell says, adding, “They should have done more aggressive searches of the property.”
Another longtime parole official, who declined to be identified, called the California case a “major screw-up.” Said this official: “One of the main reasons to do home visits is to ensure there is nothing out of the ordinary occurring at the residence. The fact that they did not see the tent [where the young women were living] is unbelievable. Thorough examination of the residence looking for signs of wrongful activities specific to the offender's criminal history is vital.”
Crime policy in the U.S. often has been made on the basis of extreme cases. Burrell worries that the Dugard-Garrido case will lead to longer prison terms for sex offenders. Instead, he says, it should serve as a good case study for parole officers to uncover rare frauds like Garrido’s.
The case also should be a cautionary tale for those who might overrely on GPS devices. Through a GPS system, “we knew where [Garrido] was,” Burrell says. The problem was that officials didn’t know what he was really doing.
Probation and parole experts hope that California officials will go public with a complete explanation of what happened—and didn’t—in their monitoring of Garrido. The initial signs are not promising. At a mid-September court appearance, a prosecutor said there might not be a trial for 18 months. State officials wouldn’t give details of his parole supervision and wouldn’t even disclose to the Sacramento Bee the official policy on how often they should have inspected the premises.
This refusal to discuss the case will not help public understanding of the challenges faced by probation and parole officers, who are on the front lines of tracking millions of convicted Americans.
Posted by Jermaine Eckard
Wednesday, March 03, 2010 09:27
sooo fake
Posted by Tina Trent
Wednesday, February 03, 2010 10:33
Ah yes, one rogue investigation our of millions, and so now we must never act on child sexual abuse again. Good argument, Alaek.
Posted by Alaek
Tuesday, January 05, 2010 04:04
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_edent.htm
“Summary:
In excess of 90 children accused a total of 20 adults with 429 instances of child sexual abuse in a day care center in Edenton NC. Among the alleged perpetrators were the sheriff and mayor. Allegations included a baby killed with a hand gun, a child being hung upside down from a tree and being set on fire. Nobody in town noticed a baby missing. Needless to say, charges were never laid against the mayor or sheriff.
Robin Byrum, Darlene Harris, Elizabeth “Betsy” Kelly, Robert “Bob” Kelly, Scott Willard Privott, Shelly Stone, and Dawn Wilson were charged with engaging in various sexual activities with children in the Kellys’ day care in 1989. Bob Kelly and Dawn Wilson were found guilty of multiple charges of child sex abuse and given long sentences. Betsy Kelly and Willard Privott pleaded “no contest” and were released. The charges against the other three were dropped. Convictions were overturned on appeal and new trials ordered. The cases were finally settled in 1999 when all charges were dropped against Kelley.
The Cases:
These charges relate to the Little Rascal’s Day Care in Edenton. It is perhaps the second most famous day care ritual abuse case in North America (after the McMartin Preschool in CA.) The PBS program Frontline has produced a series of three powerful documentary episodes on this case, called Innocence Lost. 2 It showed that the various ingredients of a typical MVMO abuse case were present in Edenton:
bullet no physical evidence that any actual abuse or killing happened.
bullet hysteria by the parents, investigators and general public.
bullet lack of evidence which would have been present if the children had actually been abused.
bullet the alleged abuse happened even as parents were coming to and fro during the day; nobody noticed anything strange at the day care center.
bullet the children initially denied that anything “funny” happened at the day care; but the interviewers did not believe the children.
bullet after months of extensive interviewing, using what are now known to be manipulative, suggestive techniques, children started to disclose abuse events. This was assisted by communications among parents who also grilled their children
bullet all of the documentation and tapes of the children’s initial interviews were lost or destroyed.
bullet testimony described a long string of physically impossible or highly improbable events
bullet nobody seems to have asked the logical question: how could 7 to 20 adults form a conspiracy and abuse children hundreds of times, without any child complaining or without any parent noticing something amiss?
Some of the children’s disclosures included:
bullet being taken to the back room of a store and sexually abused. There is a very wide opening between the back room and the rest of the store, so that any sexual abuse would have been perpetrated in the full view of customers.
bullet being taken on board a space ship and flown into outer space where they were abused.
bullet seeing a large fish tank where sharks were trained.
bullet being taken on board a ship into the ocean and abused while trained sharks swam around the boat. "
isnt it kind of ironic how cases like this showing human rights and judicial/ethical violations and what parnaoia can bring dont seem to cause politicians any different discourses or the U.S government or the media but Duhard and such do? If it is the underaged or child invovled it causes but its ok to treat adults like animals as long as ends justify means.
Posted by Keith Richard Radford Jr
Sunday, September 20, 2009 08:20
Getting to maters that mater is something we seem to be able to get down to humbly; I would like to share this with you. This from my life experience is a true connection to the ties of races through our own sex laws which have been built on misconceptions and myth.
The Supreme Court just ruled on sex offender laws where some factions of our government think by some inert reasoning that sex offender should be quarantined like some virus steaming from draconian/Islamic law sex offenders should be executed. I have seen for myself, video taken in another country where a sex offender is placed on a pole much like the Catholics use to use a pyramid shaped object and have them sit on it and spin, the pole travels through the body looking for the throat but if not found its ok cause the sharpened end of the pole will come out somewhere. The heritage of the act is in its self a throwback to troglodyte’s who are so obsessed with sex they can find that the way to deal with the issue is as revolutionary, as war, and two wrongs don’t make a right but has in fact called up deep rooted issues of people who have had to put up with this kind of “hierarchy” of historic hysteria far to long. A word taken from hysterectomy, hysteria is tied to castration used to make animals less threatening right? Good old Monty Hall. Well no wonder it’s wrong, right?
Anyway we are supposed to be the most advanced nation and we still have a death penalty when the rest of the world except for nations we are still warring with, {think!} While other nations went home our weapons dealers and torture lovers delighting in support for the death of people they don’t know or want to simply because they don’t know how to get money with out taking it from someone by force, is that supposed to includes mutilations? In my humble opinion that alone are terrorist activities as much as severed hands, ears, heads, or making a case with nothing more than an obsession justified by lies.
The truth about the sex offender registry will come out soon enough. When it does, People will see how the use of the registry was created, and by exactly who and why and the devastation it has created and the worthlessness of the use of it. It’s origin in the Crow laws that brought disgrace to our nation allowing thieves and murderous societal bigots who have trashed any shot at making good of a program in its design to make money destroying our nation and its people. We can not play god and we can not survive using this behavior model because we are compounding the problem.
It’s a ruse designed by people who are getting rich off the castration/hysterectomy/health care/physic care of people through sex laws that have gone wild. What about the people who are being used by the Medicare programs that requires these mutilations for both men and woman after they take their means of support? Can’t you see? You have created the model and it is worthless! Why don’t you just indiscriminately kill people you don’t know that’s statically the next sex offender because over 90% of all new offences are people not on the sex offender registry and the numbers are increasing not decreasing so as a behavior model the chumps put together is really screwed up and they were told before they tried it. So what is the use of such laws as the sex offender registry other than to terrorize people? With the murder of so many sex offenders and the continued disregard for life by the use of the registry it’s just a mater of time before the federal government will be held liable for the deaths through federal court.
In a nation where a statement may have a double or triple meaning and our entire linage can be traced through mud, guts, and beer it’s nice once in a while to get the picture of what is meant instead of what some thinks someone may have implied. So it is from the trenches to the hill. Remember the game where someone says something in someone’s ear then passes it the same way to the next; the person advocating such destructive laws are the ones who need to be section 8 by simple brake down of the issue not sex offenders. Best regards