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By Harriette Halepis

The recent arrest of Phillip Garrido has led to much debate as to the effectiveness of GPS trackers when being worn by paroled criminals. Many are quick to point out that even though police were tracking Garrido, not one officer noticed that Garrido was keeping Jaycee Dugard in his backyard.

GPS & Ankle Tracking

One officer noted that Garrido spent a large amount of time in his backyard on a consistent basis, though this was not deemed suspicious behaviour. GPS reports showed that Garrido went places he wasn’t supposed to go regularly, though nothing was done about this boundary breach.

In fact, most police personnel are not surprised that Garrido was never reprimanded for wandering outside of his legal boundaries. California Correctional Peace Officers Association representative Lance Corcoran told press that these violations were as “…routine as stoplights. They happen all the time.”

In short, the fact that a convicted felon has purposely violated his parole is no more unusual than a stoplight. Only, there’s nothing normal about a convicted felon wandering into areas that are legally off limits, and police had more than enough reason to stop him for stepping outside of his tracked bounds.

The problem, Corcoran states, is not that police don’t want to stop these violations. Instead, the problem is that (in this case) the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told officers not to report parolees that had stepped out of bounds.

Why? Simply put, if police were to create a report each time a parolee crossed that imaginary line, far too many people would be sent back to prison, which, in turn, would cost any state a lot of money – but, isn’t that the whole idea behind allowing criminals to live outside the prison system? If a parolee makes an illegal movement, should that person not be sent back to jail?

As the details of the Dugard case unravel, many people are taking GPS tracking technology to task. Still, the question remains: who’s to blame for Garrido’s heinous crimes? Are they the fault of the GPS tracking device that did its job, or the police system that’s supposed to be keeping our streets safe?