NARSOL’s legal team . . . NARSOL is publicly releasing for the first time copies of two expert reports filed last week in Antrim v. Carr, 19-cv-396 (Eastern District of Wisconsin). The case challenges Wisconsin’s statutory scheme requiring that certain individuals convicted of sexual offenses be forced to wear a GPS monitoring device for life, even after they are off of any criminal supervision. The plaintiff’s attorneys are Mark Weinberg and Adele Nicholas. NARSOL is subsidizing the costs of the case by paying for Plaintiff’s two expert reports, as well as any supplemental reports in the case.

The plaintiff alleges the scheme violates the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The case  has been certified as a class action, and the class currently consists of 514 persons subject to lifetime GPS monitoring because they have been convicted of a sexual offense on two or more separate occasions.

The two experts in the case are Kate Weisburd and Kelly Socia.

Ms. Weisburd is a law professor at George Washington University School of Law and one of the leading scholars concerning the impact that surveillance technology has on individuals in the criminal justice system. She is the author of a seminal law review article in the area, Punitive Surveillance, 108 Va. L. Rev. 148, (2022). Her report forcefully details the ways in which GPS technology negatively impacts the lives of individuals forced to wear the devices.

Dr. Socia is Professor in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies and a Fellow for the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is one of the leading experts on the impact of residency restrictions imposed on individuals who have been convicted of sexual offenses. Dr. Socia has approximately 50 peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Justice Quarterly; Criminology & Public Policy; Crime & Delinquency; Sex Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment; and Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.

Dr. Socia’s expert report makes three conclusions: (1) Wisconsin’s policy of automatically placing individuals on lifetime GPS monitoring based solely on whether they have been convicted of sexual offenses on more than one occasion is unreasonable, ineffective and wasteful; (2) There is little support for the use of post-incarceration GPS tracking as a means of reducing sexual recidivism; and (3) Mandating GPS tracking for 20 years or longer, especially when the policy is applied without incorporating any risk assessment–neither static nor dynamic–represents an immense waste of resources with no discernable public safety benefits.

NARSOL thanks both of these scholars for their expertise and their work in producing these reports. We are excited about this case and will provide updates as they occur.

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