Massachusetts legislators are dealing with the bed they made: requiring people with sex offense convictions to wear GPS monitors but then making it difficult for them to find a place to live (and to base their monitor) by passing laws that ban them from being near parks and schools and other places where children might be.  So now they are debating how they can clamp down on people with sex offenses living in places like the Boston Common (in other words no fixed address). So they want to clamp down on this target group by knowing where they live and where they are all the time yet set conditions that makes it very difficult for them to find a place to live or anywhere they can actually power a monitor. These are the dilemmas faced by those convinced who want to cut corrections budgets but don’t want to accept the possibility that people can change (folks with sex offense convictions have recidivism rates of about 5%) and therefore worthy of genuine freedom instead of “e-carceration.”

For details on the Massachusetts case, visit here.