<http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-offenders27nov27,1,6056154.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california>http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-offenders27nov27,1,6056154.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
From the Los Angeles Times
Viability of sex-offender law in doubt
The lifetime GPS monitoring ordered by Prop. 83 may be too costly and complex to ever fully implement. By Michael Rothfeld Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2007
SACRAMENTO -- Law enforcement leaders who pushed for a ballot initiative requiring sex offenders in California to be tracked by satellite for life are now saying that the sweeping surveillance program voters endorsed is not feasible and is unlikely to be fully implemented for years, if ever.
Under the measure, approved overwhelmingly a year ago, sex offenders must be strapped with global positioning system devices that can record their whereabouts even after they finish parole and leave the criminal justice system.
Despite their qualms, law enforcement groups contend that the benefits of Proposition 83, popularly known as Jessica's Law, outweigh its problems, and they insist that many of the flaws can be fixed. But in interviews and testimony to a state board, they have cited complications with almost every aspect of the provision requiring lifetime monitoring.
The difficulties include the impracticality of tracking sex offenders who no longer must report to parole or probation officers, the lack of any penalty for those who refuse to cooperate with monitoring and the question of whether such widespread tracking is effective in protecting the public.
The biggest issue, however, is that the law does not specify which agency or government should monitor felony sex offenders -- and shoulder hundreds of millions of dollars a year in related costs.
Only a small percentage of the 65,000 sex offenders thought to be living in communities throughout the state are subject to the law, but the numbers are expected to grow by thousands every year as more offenders are released from prison.
As a result, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state law enforcement leaders, who were allied in backing the measure, are engaged in a standoff over who should bear its financial burden.
"I don't know of any agency that has the resources to track and monitor . . . in real time," said Vacaville Police Chief Richard Word, president of the California Police Chiefs Assn. "You'll need an air traffic controller to track these folks."
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11137
From <http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/browse/browse.asp?btype=8&pid=3>Semiotext(e): Overexposed Perverting Perversions <http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=388>Sylvère Lotringer
with a new introduction by the author and an additional chapter
Do you ever get aroused by your patient's fantasies? Do you discover through them something about your own sexuality? --About my sexuality? You are exposed to a lot of fantasies. --Oh yes. Quite frankly, I think it has a satiation effect on me. I've been a sex researcher for ten years, and sometimes I get fed up with it, you know. I talk to people about sex all day long, and it does get to be a drag.
--from Overexposed
The most perverse perversions are not always those one would expect. Originally conceived as an American update to Foucault's History of Sexuality, Overexposed is even more outrageous and thought-provoking today than it was twenty years ago when first published by a commercial publisher. By a strange reversal, rather than being punished, deviant desire now is administrated in specialized clinics under medical supervision. Sexual excess is being turned into a "boredom therapy" claiming to rid patients of their own desires by forcing them to indulge them past the point of satiety. But are perversions still perverse when they are vindicated unconditionally? At once clinical, bewildering, and deeply poignant, Overexposed shows how science can pervert itself by identifying too closely with its object. This insider's exposition of controversial cognitive behavioral methods (carried out with instruments straight out of A Clockwork Orange--penile transducer? pupillometer?) is a hallucinatory document on the manner in which our postmodern society exposes sexuality to the point of overexposure--in order to exterminate it.
Sylvère Lotringer, general editor of Semiotext(e), lives in New York and Baja, California. He is the author of Overexposed: Perverting Perversions (Semiotext(e), 2007).