Iowa lawmakers get price-tag for serious sex offender monitoring

As detailed in this local article, headlined "Tracking Iowa sex offenders to cost millions," the price of expanded monitoring of sex offenders is starting to come into focus for legislators in at least one state. Here are the details:

Iowa lawmakers received new evidence Tuesday that the cost and consequences of tracking sex offenders in the next decade will be at least $30 million more than is now spent, unless officials find better ways to curb costs while guarding public safety.

A report from Iowa’s Division of Juvenile and Justice Planning shows that special, post-prison sentences for sex offenders will increase parole caseloads in Iowa by more than 50 percent by 2020.  An estimated 2,300 additional sex offenders will have to be monitored for 10 years or life, according to an Iowa law passed in 2005.  That rising number of offenders will increase the state’s minimum monitoring costs each year by $3.05 million, through 2020.

The new research was conducted for Iowa’s Sex Offender Research Council, an advisory group that is recommending the state begin examining best practices for supervising sex offenders. The goal would be to curb, where possible, monitoring if someone is unlikely to commit new crimes.

But leaders of public safety and judiciary committees in the Legislature said Tuesday that no major changes to existing sex offenders laws are being discussed this year. Tweaking special sentences is — in the short-term, at least — unlikely for political reasons, they said. “Really, I don’t think that would ever happen,” said Rep. Clel Baudler, R-Greenfield, chairman of the House Public Safety Committee.

Iowa was one of more than 20 states that created special sentences in the past decade to track sex offenders after their release from prison using corrections officers and technology such as GPS monitors. The move came in response to public outrage over the highly publicized murder of Jetseta Gage, 10, of Cedar Rapids in 2005 by a sex offender.

A 2009 investigation by The Des Moines Register found the flood of new sex offenders under supervision would cost taxpayers a minimum of $168 million over 20 years, or about $8.4 million a year.  The study released Tuesday tallied only the minimum monitoring that would be required under the 2005 law and excluded other costs the Register considered.

Budget numbers show the full cost of treating, supervising and monitoring sex offenders has mushroomed substantially — from $3.3 million in 2005 to $11.5 million last year, according to Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency....

Anyone in Iowa convicted of a felony sex crime will receive lifetime probation.  But these harsher post-prison sentences for the vast majority of Iowa’s sex offenders will mean other convicts — drunken drivers, stalkers, even people convicted of murder — are likely to receive less supervision over time, corrections officials have said.