Criminal Justice
When Protective Orders Don’t Work, Satellite Monitoring May Control Abusers
Posted Apr 22, 2008, 06:27 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
It's a sad and all-too-frequent story when an abuser, often male, violates a court protective order.
Today, for instance, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that a woman found murdered yesterday had an order of protection against her husband. While he is reportedly not a suspect in that crime, he is being sought for allegedly abducting their three children, with whom he was also barred from having contact by the court order, after school on Friday.
However, a bill in progress in the Illinois legislature is intended to make it easier for those with protective orders to protect themselves. By permitting judges to require that the anyone who has violated a protective order be monitored by a GPS satellite system, it helps discourage abusers from crossing the line into zones they are forbidden to enter, explains the Chicago Tribune in another article. The bill passed the state house of representatives unanimously last week, and now goes to the state senate.
It was prompted by the murder last month of real estate broker Cindy Bischof by a former boyfriend, who then shot himself. Although, as discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, the system worked in her case—she got a protective order, and prosecutors took seriously prior violations—it nonetheless did not prevent her from being killed by her abuser.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: "DA Probes ‘Sadly Predictable’ Murder; Victim Never Warned of Spouse’s Release"
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