California Gov. Jerry Brown cracked down on sex offenders who disarm their electronic trackers while on parole, signing legislation requiring that they stay in jail once they are caught, says the Los Angeles Times. Some counties with crowded jails have freed such offenders almost immediately after detaining them for tampering with the GPS devices. The new law requires that they be sentenced to 180 days and serve their entire parole revocation in jail.
The monitors are required under a law approved by California voters in 2006. State corrections officials said that more than 5,000 warrants for GPS tampering were issued in the first 15 months after penalties for doing so were reduced under Brown’s 2011 prison “realignment” program.