SACRAMENTO – Assemblymember Steve Fox (D-Palmdale) on Friday announced that his Assembly Bill (AB) 1607 received unanimous bipartisan support from the Assembly. The bill revises the Sexual Violent Predator (SVP) Act to make the process of conditional release of these offenders more transparent and allow input from the areas most affected by their release.
“This is a huge victory for local control in keeping sexual violent predators away from potential victims,” said Fox. “Current law allows judges to make unilateral decisions about placing high risk parolees into other counties without including those communities in the conditional release process. Rural communities lack the infrastructure and law enforcement presence to manage these parolees adequately.”
AB 1607 is a technical revision to the Sexual Violent Predator Act and requires that a potential county of domicile for a sexual violent predator (county where the SVP is allegedly from and may be released back to) be given notice and an opportunity to be heard in court prior to determining the location where the SVP will be required to live.
Once the court determines domicile, the placement and conditional release will be supervised by the county of domicile – transferring the jurisdiction from one court to another.
This bill is in response to the case of Christopher Evans Hubbart, the so-called “Pillowcase Rapist” who was treated in Santa Clara County. Santa Clara was not required to inform Los Angeles County of the potential to conditionally release Hubbart in Lake Los Angeles until determining placement.
AB 1607 will simplify this process and allow the areas most affected by a conditional release to have a say in the process.
AB 1607 now moves to the Senate for consideration.
(Information via press release from the office of Assemblymember Steve Fox.)
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financemom4 says
Since the community has been defeated in preventing his release, it now begins our job to educate our children and protect each other as one. This need to be a time to come together and unite. I don’t know what I’d way out there in the middle of nowhere, but we can pray that he will not have access to any transportation to roam the city and that they put a bracelet tight enough he will be unable to remove it. Good give strength to the parole officer that will be under scrutiny to make sure he is accounted for at all hours of the day.
alleykatkitten says
There should be no one like this released into society that only will think of another way to search for his victims. The pillowcase rapist should not be our problem nor burden. Money funded to watch this clown could be spent on better things. Now taxpayers are footing his 24 hour surveillance and for what, to watch him or to protect him from his neighbors who want to beat the hell out of him, cause he is going to to strike again.