Our View: Taking action
On the night of July Fourth, a 12-year-old girl named Zina Linnik was wearing the carefree colors of summer – a pink T-shirt; pink, orange and yellow capris; and red flip-flops – when she disappeared from an alley near her home in Tacoma.
Her body was found about a week later. Since then, a state task force was formed, and on Wednesday Gov. Chris Gregoire acted on one of its preliminary recommendations: She decided to spend approximately $400,000 from a state emergency fund to start electronic monitoring for high-level sex offenders.
Gregoire’s decision will help the state keep closer track of offenders who are believed to be highly likely to commit these crimes again.
It’s a reasonable solution to a problem that frequently evokes blind rage and hysteria. Plus, it has strong bipartisan backing. Legislature Republicans had been calling for such a strategy even before Gregoire issued her order.
The program was designed to start last week, by immediately clamping these devices on five level 3 sex offenders. By mid-2008, 50 offenders will likely be wearing monitors, and by mid-2009, approximately 150.
That won’t cover all of the 303 level 3 sex offenders currently under Department of Corrections supervision, let alone the rest of the state’s estimated 20,000 registered sex offenders.
This monitoring system isn’t perfect. These devices won’t detect crimes that occur in the offender’s own home. Neither do they work well for homeless offenders. But they do hold promise.
Americans often express an impassioned, if clichéd, response to high-level sex offenders: “Lock them up, and throw away the key.” That’s a remedy we simply can’t afford. The state’s new Special Commitment Center was designed to treat violent sexual predators. The annual cost per prisoner, according to the Washington Office of Financial Management, runs as high as $192,000. The annual cost for an inmate at a Washington prison averages $32,409. Annual electronic monitoring costs much less – about $3,400 for each offender.
In the midst of the expense and the fear, we should not lose sight of positive signs of change.
Society now expects government to keep a close eye on offenders after they’re released from prison. We’re less likely to let them melt back into the shadows, lurking for more victims. And, overall, the arrest rates for sex crimes in this state are dropping, down 52 percent from 1990 to 2004, according to a Washington State Institute for Public Policy report.
The task force is expected to release a report with more recommendations. They’re expected to suggest that all past sex offenders (not just current ones) be required to provide DNA samples to a national database.
Prevention of sex crimes isn’t an exact science yet. It may never be.
But the governor’s decision has the potential to make life safer for Washington’s children well before the next Fourth of July rolls around.