Funds Restored For

Monitoring Domestic Violence Offenders

HARTFORD — A move by Connecticut lawmakers to include funding for the continuation of the state’s global positioning system (GPS) monitoring program in its budget implementation bill will significantly increase the safety of those victims at highest risk, according to the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence (CCADV).

As the recognized voice for domestic violence victims and those who serve them in Connecticut, Coalition Executive Director Karen Jarmoc thanked the General Assembly for investing an additional $510,000 in this meaningful project that saves lives.

Ms Jarmoc noted that, according to the Connecticut Domestic Violence Fatality Review Report, the state averages 16 homicides annually as a consequence of domestic violence. GPS monitoring, which is targeted toward those abusers who have been deemed to be at the highest risk of fatally harming their partner, is an effective and proven tool that can be used as part of a larger coordinated community response to prevent domestic violence homicides.

“It is our job at CCADV to try to keep victims safe and safer at the end of each day. The GPS monitoring is one important method for achieving that goal as it provides an increased safety barrier to victims who are most at risk. We are really pleased that the legislature found a way to keep this program going in the pilot sites,” she said

Through the GPS monitoring program, courts set up exclusion zones that will be predefined and will be communicated to both the offender and the victim, so that the offender knows exactly where he or she can or cannot travel relative to the victim’s home or place of work. At the point in which the offender enters one of those exclusion zones, an alert would be sent to law enforcement and by request, the victim will be notified.

This system enables law enforcement to not only monitor an offender but to respond quickly when an offender goes near specified locations such as a victim’s home, school, or place of employment.

On October 1, 2010, Connecticut joined a coalition of nearly 20 states in the United States dedicated to implementing GPS tracking on certain high risk domestic violence offenders. The program that used round-the-clock GPS devices to monitor 119 high-risk offenders in the Hartford, Danielson, and Bridgeport areas ended in July 2011 when $140,000 in federal stimulus money ran out.