By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

WHILE supporting a proposal to require the use of electronic monitoring and tracking devices for sex offenders, prison officials urged senators yesterday to evaluate the financial cost that such requirement would entail.
“I support any technology that will ensure the safety of the community, but we have to make sure that we can sustain it. We cannot mandate something that we will change later because we cannot sustain it,” acting Department of Corrections director Robert Camacho said in an interview with Variety after testifying on Bill 2.
“If we are to implement this requirement, we have to plan this ahead. We have to assess its financial impact and decide who will foot the bill,” Camacho said.
Introduced by Sen. Ray Tenorio, R-Yigo, Bill 2 seeks to require sex convicts to wear electronic tracking devices at the duration of probation. The new proposal seeks to supplement an existing law—which Tenorio introduced in the 28th Legislature—which established the sex offender registry on Guam, and imposed a blanket prohibition on the hiring of sex offenders by any government agency and private companies with government contracts.
“The monitoring costs may be extremely high,” Camacho told Tenorio’s public safety committee, which heard the bill yesterday. “We have to consider the funding source. Our 2007 budgetary plan does not include cost factors. 
He said the idea of passing the cost on to the sex convicts themselves would not be a viable option considering their very limited job opportunities.
“We have enacted law prohibiting sex offenders from government work and work with private contractors. Sex offenders have a stigma that follows them throughout the community, thus many private agencies refuse to hire them,” Camacho told the committee.
“So even if we make provisions to allow sex offenders to pay for their monitoring services, many will be unable to do so for their lack of employment. We must accept that we may have to incur the monitoring costs,” he added.
Camacho said Guam has 399 inmates on the sex offender registry.
Edward Alvarez, chief probation officer, suggested that the electronic tracking devices be required only for “high risk sex offenders,” or the ones who were convicted of serious sex crimes.
But even if the devices are required only for high risk offenders, Alvarez said the government would still have to bear a significant cost of monitoring. He said a monitoring device costs about $10 a day to maintain.
“There are approximately 25 high risk offenders on probation and are on the sex offender registry. At the present cost times 25 clients times 365 days equals $91,250 a year,” Alvarez said.
“We are not aware of any vendor who can provide this service for less,” Alvarez said. “But the main point is that if this bill comes with no resources and money, then it is innocuous at best and really defeats the spirit of the bill,” he added.