Saturday, March 19, 2011

The time for change is now

We are comming to a time of crisist. We as a state are spending more money then we make. We are creating laws that we can not fund. and for the first time in my life i am seeing democracy at its finest. We have people standing outside the capitol demanding change. I feel more involved with my state and goverment then every in my life.

I see so many issues with what the state and the national goverment are doing to sexual offenders as well as the victims of sexual assault. I would be willing to take everything that i have recieved if there would never be another victim, but that is just not how things work. So i feel that we now need to find the best way possible to protect the rights of the victims as well as the offenders, and what i am seeing is neither one of there rights are being protected. I have been seeing things comming out of Walkers Budget for this year in Wisconsin that are causing me great concern, and the most concerning thing i have scene so far was there is going to be a budget cut to programs that work with the victims of sexual assault. I personally work with Reach Counseling here in the Neenah area, and it is sad to see that they might not be able to help the victims of sexual assault. If you ask me this is not just making them victims of sexual assault, but also victims of the system that is supposed to be here to help these persons. Who are these persons supposed to get help from if the professionals are not able to be there due to budget cuts.

Another thing that blows my mind is GPS, the state of WI spends $10,000.00 per offender per year. This idea of placing a offender on GPS sounds great on paper, in theory we can watch everyone of these offenders and always see where they are. It is a feel good law, and always the citizens of this state have the feeling that they are now safe due to this program. It feels good, but in reatlity but they see nothing but a blimp on a map. They can see where these offenders are, not who they are around, or what they are doing at the location. I do not disagree that this is a great tool for the Department of Corrections and local law enforcment, but it is not a perfect system. I personally have been incarcerated 3 times because of this piece of equipment. Over the last nine months I have been placed in the county jail for a total of 13 days because of GPS. This system if they continue to use it, needs help, they need to get newer equipment that works better and will do more to protect the community.
Lets get back to the dollars and cents of GPS. In the fiscal year ending in 2010, the State of Wisconsin had a max of 280 offenders on GPS, and they spent 2.737 million that year for those offenders. By the end of this year they will have about 500 offenders on in this program at the tune of about $5,000,000.00 for the year.  What will it cost the year after and then the year after that, nobody knows because nobody can antisipate the problems that will come up with the system or how many offenders will be releasing back onto supervision in the upcomming years. All that i can see, is unless there is changes to the current law, this program will cost more and more to the taypayers until they force a change. As the law is written right now, there is no way that the offender can potition to be removed from this system for a minunum of 20 years from the date it is placed on the offenders ankle. Think about this, if the law does not change, and the prices of the system does not change over 20 years it will cost the tax payers of this great state two hundred thousand dollars for each offender. So the question to you, the tax payers, how much do you want to spend to feel good? is $10,000.00 per offender per year worth feeling good worth it?

As the heading says, I am the offender and this is only what i see through my eyes, I would appreciate your feed back on anything that i post, weather you agree or disagree, i welcome the feed back and love to challange the way i think as it will only make me a better person.  I as a person that deals with this on a day to day basis have a different view them most people, as most people do not have to deal with the things i deal with every day. I would like i said, welcome your feedback if you are doing it to be constructive and not just argumentitive. Thank you for your time and consideration on my views and prospectives, I look forward to continue to post and express my viewpoints in the future.

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