Keeping You Safe: GPS Sex Offender Tracking Bill Still Alive

JACKSON, Miss.--Your kids could be safer this time next year if Sen. Will Longwitz (R-Madison) gets his way. He's pushing a bill that would place GPS tracking devices on problem sex offenders-the ones who fail to register. The bill survived the committee deadline Tuesday and is closer to getting a vote on the Senate floor.

"If it were up to me these guys would never get out of jail," he said, "once they've fondled a child, for instance."

Longwitz said the gist of the bill would be to track the 100 or so problem offenders who have a bad track record when it comes to law enforcement keeping up with them. He said one example was a man in Rankin County, Cortrell Rose, who's accused of killing his neighbor, Lenora Edhegard, 60, last year.

"He had already served time for a sex offense against a child. He had just served a year in jail for violating the sex offender registry, If we had this law I'm proposing in place, he would have had GPS tracking and we would have known he was not living where he said he was."

Mississippi, like all other states, requires sex offenders to register their address and other information. That can be for as much as a lifetime, depending on the offense and the order of the sentencing judge.

Longwitz said that the bill makes the offender pay for the device "as much as possible".