GPS System Monitors Parolees 24/7
May 9 -- When convicted rapist Lawrence Napper was released from prison in April 2000, he was considered so dangerous that he was placed in a state-of-the-art satellite tracking program that recorded his movements 24 hours a day.
The system did its job, noting every time Napper violated the terms of his parole by entering an area he was not supposed to — such as the Houston college where he abducted a female student two decades ago and raped her, landing him in prison in 1981.
Under Texas law, parole officers should have arrested Napper after the first violation. But he logged no fewer than 444 violations in just nine months, and was not picked up.
Then, despite his violations, he was rewarded by being transferred to a less-restrictive monitoring program. One month later, according to police, he snatched a 6-year-old boy from a Houston street corner and sexually assaulted him.
Parolees Given ‘Exclusion Areas’
Napper was one of 25 paroled killers, rapists and sex offenders under high-tech satellite monitoring in Texas. While standard electronic monitoring can detect only whether a parolee is at a given location (such as home or work), the satellite system can tell exactly where the parolee is at all times. Texas is one of 27 states using the satellite system to monitor parolees.
The system, developed by Pro-Tech Monitoring of Tampa, Fla., consists of a tamper-resistant ankle bracelet that is connected wirelessly to a tracking device that can be worn on a belt. The tracking device incorporates a GPS receiver and a cell phone. The receiver takes in signals from the Defense Department's network of GPS satellites 12,000 miles away in space, then triangulates them to determine the parolee's location. The cell phone transmits the location as often as every minute to monitoring stations where parole officers track the parolee's movements on computer screens. The system also records the parolee's movements, so officers can review them subsequently.
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