{"title":"Fourth Amendment Constraints on the Technological Monitoring of Convicted Sex Offenders","authors":"Ben A. McJunkin, J. Prescott","doi":"10.1525/NCLR.2018.21.3.379","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"More than forty U.S. states currently track at least some of their convicted sex offenders using GPS devices. Many offenders will be monitored for life. The burdens and expense of living indefinitely under constant technological monitoring have been well documented, but most commentators have assumed that these burdens were of no constitutional moment because states have characterized such surveillance as “civil” in character—and courts have seemed to agree. In 2015, however, the Supreme Court decided in Grady v. North Carolina that attaching a GPS monitoring device to a person was a Fourth Amendment search, notwithstanding the ostensibly civil character of the surveillance. Grady left open the question whether the search—and the state’s technological monitoring program more generally—was constitutionally reasonable. This Essay considers the doctrine and theory of Fourth Amendment reasonableness as it applies to both current and envisioned sex offender monitoring technologies to evaluate whether the Fourth Amendment may serve as an effective check on post-release monitoring regimes.","PeriodicalId":44796,"journal":{"name":"New Criminal Law Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2018-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"New Criminal Law Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1525/NCLR.2018.21.3.379","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
More than forty U.S. states currently track at least some of their convicted sex offenders using GPS devices. Many offenders will be monitored for life. The burdens and expense of living indefinitely under constant technological monitoring have been well documented, but most commentators have assumed that these burdens were of no constitutional moment because states have characterized such surveillance as “civil” in character—and courts have seemed to agree. In 2015, however, the Supreme Court decided in Grady v. North Carolina that attaching a GPS monitoring device to a person was a Fourth Amendment search, notwithstanding the ostensibly civil character of the surveillance. Grady left open the question whether the search—and the state’s technological monitoring program more generally—was constitutionally reasonable. This Essay considers the doctrine and theory of Fourth Amendment reasonableness as it applies to both current and envisioned sex offender monitoring technologies to evaluate whether the Fourth Amendment may serve as an effective check on post-release monitoring regimes.
美国40多个州目前使用GPS设备追踪至少部分被定罪的性犯罪者。许多违规者将被终身监禁。长期生活在持续不断的技术监控下的负担和费用已经得到了充分的证明,但大多数评论家认为这些负担不属于宪法范畴,因为各州将这种监控定性为“民事”性质——法院似乎也同意这一点。然而,2015年,最高法院在格雷迪诉北卡罗来纳州案(Grady v. North Carolina)中裁定,在个人身上安装GPS监控设备属于第四修正案规定的搜查,尽管这种监视表面上具有民事性质。格雷迪留下了一个问题,即搜查——以及更广泛的国家技术监控项目——在宪法上是否合理。本文考虑了第四修正案的合理性原则和理论,因为它适用于当前和设想的性犯罪者监测技术,以评估第四修正案是否可以作为释放后监测制度的有效检查。
期刊介绍:
Focused on examinations of crime and punishment in domestic, transnational, and international contexts, New Criminal Law Review provides timely, innovative commentary and in-depth scholarly analyses on a wide range of criminal law topics. The journal encourages a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches and is a crucial resource for criminal law professionals in both academia and the criminal justice system. The journal publishes thematic forum sections and special issues, full-length peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, and occasional correspondence.