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GPS gadget not enough to save child, authorities say |
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Thursday, 12 March 2009 18:00 |
A predatory pedophile who was fitted with a GPS gadget and "registered" on the Internet has been charged with the murder of a 13-year old Washington girl.
Seventh-grader Alycia Nipp was assaulted and murdered in a vacant lot
in Vancouver, Washington last month, as she walked home from a
Wal-Mart. Police say her murderer was a convicted child predator who
was homeless and wearing a GPS tracking device at the time he
commmitted the crime.
Authorities say the murder suspect, 30, was convicted in 1998 for sex
offenses against a child and given probation. CNN reports he was
arrested at least three times after that, twice for failing to
"register" as a sex offender.
The case is sure to provide fuel for debate between two noisy camps of misguided advocates.
On one side are those who see listing sex offenders' names on the
Internet and fitting them with GPS gadgets as a serious national child
safety strategy. In political terms, this group has "sucked all the air
out" of most rooms where child protection policy is debated, diverting
media attention and public will from meaningful solutions.
Lined up on the other side are critics who mischaracterize sex offender
registries and GPS monitoring as draconian and
overly punitive. These partisans are mounting a backlash against the
2006 Adam Walsh Act and registry laws in general, hoping that hearings
by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime will begin to roll back
what they see as over-reaching registration laws.
The truth is, dumping predatory pedophiles into communities with little
more than a GPS bracelet and an Internet listing is the result of a
nearly 15-year unholy alliance between sex offender registry advocates,
politicians and the news media. It's a policy designed from the outset to substitute relatively cheap and symbolic measures for costly correctional supervision, whether prison or intensive probation and parole. Sex offender registration, including GPS monitoring, is the least intrusive, least expensive and least effective form of community control there is, contrary to the representations of advocates, opponents and the news media.
Politicians love registries and GPS gadgets because they're cheap and
wildly popular. The news media covers them extravagently because they are an
endless source of compelling, localized stories. And many advocates
love them because they feel good and are perennially on center stage (and in some cases even a source of financial income).
In another footnote to the murder of Alycia Nipp, CNN reports that the
child's aunt "was raped twice as a teen and [her] grandmother was
kidnapped as a child..."
"We all made Licy the promise that it would never happen to her,"
said the aunt, Amber Hager. "Now we're left wondering: What didn't we
say? What didn't we do?"
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