On a Wednesday afternoon in a large Canadian mall, a man in his mid-thirties was shopping in a retail store with a weird type of bracelet on his ankle. No one notices that it is a GPS tracking device, and he is an offender who just came out of jail on parole. There are a lot of people at the mall and one person, named Steve notices it and remembers a news story about how these GPS bracelets are really safe and can track a person’s movement step by step, but he just kept his way and minded his own business and started shopping. Steve, after shopping got out of the mall and was just about to get into his car, when he saw a woman wearing a similar device on her ankle, this made Steve question the fact that could two people wearing devices
…show more content…
I disagree with Graeme Wood’s claim in “Prison without Walls” that using GPS devices to monitor nonviolent offenders instead of sending them to prison would be “a giant step forward for justice, criminal rehabilitation, and society,” because you cannot monitor everything with GPS devices, the public will be at threat, and that offenders can find a way to escape or hack these devices.
The first reason why I think that GPS devices on nonviolent offenders is a bad idea is because we cannot monitor everything with tracking devices. These devices have limitations. With GPS devices, we can only track where the offender is at the moment, but we cannot keep track of whom the offender is talking to either in person or on the phone at all times. This would mean that if a nonviolent offender was sent out into the public on …show more content…
There have been some cases in the United States in which the criminal or offender has worn a monitoring device but has taken it off, and nothing has happened to him, which means that the authorities don’t even know that he has taken it off. This proves that there can always be technical problems in anything that is like a computer, even a GPS monitoring system. There have also been tests conducted to see if these GPS monitoring systems are working properly or not and the results were not good. In 2012 California starting doing tests on a lot of its offenders, and authorities found that “the devices used in half the state were so inaccurate and unreliable” (John, Paige St). Also that “Batteries died early, cases cracked, reported locations were off by as much as three miles” (John, Paige St). So this states that offenders were able to get out of the prison of GPS monitors due to technical difficulties and their own efforts.
Therefore, GPS monitoring devices are a giant step backwards, and they cannot be trusted, especially with offenders who will try to escape or repeat offend at the vary chance they get, and these devices are just helping them in this. But the victims of these offenders
I disagree with Graeme Wood’s claim in “Prison without Walls” that using GPS devices to monitor nonviolent offenders instead of sending them to prison would be “a giant step forward for justice, criminal rehabilitation, and society,” because you cannot monitor everything with GPS devices, the public will be at threat, and that offenders can find a way to escape or hack these devices.
The first reason why I think that GPS devices on nonviolent offenders is a bad idea is because we cannot monitor everything with tracking devices. These devices have limitations. With GPS devices, we can only track where the offender is at the moment, but we cannot keep track of whom the offender is talking to either in person or on the phone at all times. This would mean that if a nonviolent offender was sent out into the public on …show more content…
There have been some cases in the United States in which the criminal or offender has worn a monitoring device but has taken it off, and nothing has happened to him, which means that the authorities don’t even know that he has taken it off. This proves that there can always be technical problems in anything that is like a computer, even a GPS monitoring system. There have also been tests conducted to see if these GPS monitoring systems are working properly or not and the results were not good. In 2012 California starting doing tests on a lot of its offenders, and authorities found that “the devices used in half the state were so inaccurate and unreliable” (John, Paige St). Also that “Batteries died early, cases cracked, reported locations were off by as much as three miles” (John, Paige St). So this states that offenders were able to get out of the prison of GPS monitors due to technical difficulties and their own efforts.
Therefore, GPS monitoring devices are a giant step backwards, and they cannot be trusted, especially with offenders who will try to escape or repeat offend at the vary chance they get, and these devices are just helping them in this. But the victims of these offenders