Wagner also recommended that the state police and probation board should request that the General Assembly amend Megans Law to require at least five years of GPS monitoring for all s*xually violent predators whose victims are children.

Wagner made the recommendations in a special report which disclosed that, in early June, the state had lost track of 923, or nearly 10 percent, of the states approximately 9,800 registered s*x offenders.

"Because the primary purpose of the Megans Law registry is to help protect the public by letting community residents know where convicted s*x offenders live, Pennsylvania should use every tool available to make sure the offenders keep their address registrations up to date," Wagner said.

"Children are our most precious and vulnerable members of our society, and we must do all that we can to keep them safe by not losing track of a single s*x offender."

Megans Law is named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and murdered by a twice-convicted s*x offender in 1994. Pennsylvania passed its initial version of Megans Law in 1995.

The Pennsylvania State Police is the lead state agency for administering the commonwealths Megans Law, including maintaining information on the public Web site.

The Web site provides the public such information as each s*x offenders name, home address and work or school address, as well as a physical description including height, weight and eye color. It also lists the type of crime for which each s*x offender was convicted.

A review by Department of the Auditor General auditors estimated that at least 64 of the states registered s*xually violent predators had been convicted of crimes against minors.

Wagners report noted that at least 33 states, as well as at least 14 Pennsylvania counties, already use GPS technology to track certain registered s*x offenders. At present, Pennsylvanias Megans Law permits, but does not require, the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole or county probation authorities to use GPS technology to track s*x offenders.

Global positioning systems can pinpoint a persons physical location using satellites in orbit. Offenders wear GPS tracking devices that detect the satellite signals and allow law enforcement officials to track the offenders movements almost minute by minute.

Pennsylvania counties using GPS typically charge s*x offenders one-time hook-up fees of $30 to $50 and daily rates of $5 to $20 to cover equipment costs. County officials said that most offenders were able to pay the fees.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and the probation board conducted a GPS pilot program in five different geographic locations from October 2005 until June 2006 but were disappointed by technological shortcomings such as a loss of satellite coverage in certain areas and various equipment malfunctions.

Wagner said that technological advances since then have made GPS more reliable, and that its advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Among the advantages: GPS is the highest level of supervision available, short of incarceration; GPS data can be used in court; and GPS can serve as a deterrent to criminal behavior.

"While GPS technology cannot prevent a crime from occurring, it can provide critical, verifiable information either to place a s*x offender at the scene of a committed crime or to rule the offender out," Wagner said.

"There is no reason why Pennsylvania should not revise the present Megans Law to require GPS monitoring of our most violent s*xual predators as well as s*x offenders who have broken the law by failing to register their addresses."

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