Map developed for tracking sex offenders

February 6, 2006

Mapping technology is being developed in Texas to help police monitor the real-time movements of registered sex offenders in greater detail.

A team from the Texas A&M University architecture school is working on geographical information systems technology that will help law-enforcement agencies comply with new laws and increase public pressure to keep tabs on potential predators.

The university said in a news release Monday that tracking technology is more complicated than simply strapping an ankle bracelet onto a suspect since individuals are by nature highly mobile and different communities have different laws and boundaries.

The Aggie team has been adding to the capabilities of the system by ranking the risk potential of individual offenders and overlaying their locations with maps that include parks, pools and other locations where kids tend to congregate.

Initial tests during the past year have provided some surprising insights, in particular a disturbing concentration of registered offenders living very near to or inside designated exclusion zones.

Rate this story - 4.8 /5 (4 votes)

rank
1
2
3
4
5

view popular

Other News

Signal fading on radio traffic reports

Technology / Other

1minute ago | not rated yet | 0

(AP) -- For more than 20 years, Mike Nolan was known to radio listeners as the "eye in the sky." He flew over Southern California freeways in his single-engine plane, reporting on the nation's worst traffic.

Government delays new ban on Internet gambling

Technology / Internet

1hour ago | not rated yet | 0

(AP) -- The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are giving U.S. financial institutions an additional six months to comply with regulations designed to ban Internet gambling.

Fujitsu Develops Technology for Low-Temperature Full-Service Direct Formation of Graphene Transistors on Large-Scale Sub

Technology / Semiconductors

1hour ago | 5 / 5 (2) | 0

Fujitsu Laboratories today announced, as a world first, the development of a novel technology for forming graphene transistors directly on the entire surface of large-scale insulating substrates at low temperatures ...

'Avatar' video game to expand film's alien world

Technology / Software

1hour ago | not rated yet | 0

(AP) -- James Cameron was thinking beyond the big screen when he created the alien world of Pandora. The "Titanic" director worked in tandem with video game developer Ubisoft Montreal on the game based on ...

Semantic research sets world standards

Technology / Computer Sciences

8 hours ago | 2 / 5 (1) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- European researchers have created new tools for semantic technology development which are helping to set the next generation of official standards. The tools also unblock some key bottlenecks ...