A new Arkansas law requiring sexually violent predators to be on electronic monitoring at their own expense for at least a decade will cost each offender thousands of dollars every year – money that parole officials believe the offenders won't be able to pay, says the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. If they can't, the state must bear the costs or let those predators move about unsupervised. With the number of predators growing –from 67 in mid-March to 83 in early April – the state could get stuck with millions of dollars in monitoring costs as people who committed crimes after the law went into effect April 7 are labeled as predators and released.
The law requires those predators pay up to $15 a day to be monitored for a minimum of 10 years, unless they are indigent. Most, sexually violent predators would qualify as indigent, said an official. A majority of higher-risk sex offenders monitored under the state's current system earn minimum wage to $ 10 an hour. Last year, at least nine states enacted laws requiring that sexual predators be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week, says the National Conference of State Legislatures.