Tracking a Predator
Ever since kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard was found alive this summer, outraged Californians have been asking could it have been possible for convicted rapist Phillip Garrido to hide her for 18 years in his suburban backyard, father two children with his victim - all while being closely monitored by parole agents. He even wore a GPS ankle bracelet.
In a scathing report released Wednesday state investigators outlined massive missteps and missed opportunities by the department of corrections that prolonged Jaycee's imprisonment: failure to adequately supervise Garrido, failure to talk to neighbors, and even failure to properly train his parole officers, reports CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker.
"We determined that Garrido was only properly supervised 12 out of the 123 months it supervised him, a failure rate of 90 percent," said David Shaw, the California Inspector General.
Critics say the system for monitoring sex offenders is broken across the country. All 50 states have Web site sex offender lists for citizens to see if an offender lives near their house or a park. There are almost 700,000 registered sex offenders nationwide, but few officers to monitor them. In Florida, there are 40 sex offenders for every parole officer, in Colorado, its 26 to one in addition to their other cases. But the biggest problem critics say is failure to prioritize. States monitor teens convicted of "sexting," sending naked pictures of themselves over cell phones, just as they do child rapists, like Garrido.
"We need to separate the really bad from the not so bad, and make a determination who the really bad people are," said Robin Sax, a former sex crimes prosecutor.
Even worse, in many states convicted sex offenders are only required to send in a postcard with their address once a year. As a result some100,000 convicted sex offenders have dropped out of the system, disappeared altogether. Still, John Walsh, whose son was abducted 28 years ago, says states are balking at complying with a tough new federal laws to track and monitor sex offenders.
"The system is broken," Walsh said. "It's overwhelmed and I think the public is starting to realize that."
Perhaps most alarming, Garrido was being watched more closely than most sex offenders.
