Hoyt Layson Jr, designer of the
first GPS program for the tracking of convicted felons,
discussed the emerging field of crime scene correlation. Layson, chief technologist for
the Florida firm Satellite Tracking of People (STOP), said crime scene correlation
can
dramatically reduce recidivism rates. By integrating
the electronic monitoring of
offenders with crime
scene mapping in a Web-based application that makes data
available to probation officers, police officers and crime scene analysts, Layson said law
enforcement agencies can see when a crime scene and a prior offender correlate.
According to Layson, 67 percent of offenders are incarcerated
again within two years of
their release. In Florida,
when crime scene correlation has been in operation since 2002,
the recidivism rate has been brought down to less than 5 percent.
Florida Representative Dick Kravitz discussed Florida's Jessica Lunsford Act of 2005,
crafted after last spring's murder of a 9-year-old Florida girl by a convicted
sex offender.
The Jessica Lunsford Act requires
child sex offenders to be sentenced to at least 25 years
in prison and then be electronically monitored for the rest of their lives, according to
Kravitz, prime sponsor of the act. It also requires all sex offenders to wear a
monitoring
device for the duration of their probation
once they are released from prison. "If the
protections
of this bill had been in place before Jessica Lunsford was killed, that little girl
would still be alive today," Kravitz said.
Barry Scheck, director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin Cardoza School of Law,
reminded legislators that as law enforcement agencies rely more and more on crime
labs
to provide forensic analyses, the need for
accuracy becomes more acute. "For every
wrongful
conviction, the real perpetrator goes free," said Scheck, whose Innocence
Project has resulted in the exoneration 161 wrongfully convicted and incarcerated
individuals. Scheck unveiled model crime laboratory oversight legislation to establish
an independent state science commission, and to develop a reporting
system through
which laboratories report misconduct or negligence.
