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Offender Locator for iPhone tracks sex offenders (review)
Editors' note: As of Thursday, August 6, the paid version of this app was pulled from the iTunes App Store by Apple, but the free version is still available.
Every neighborhood watch group and PTA parent knows that online crime statistics and sex offender databases have been available online for years. Now, Offender Locator for the iPhone or iPod Touch makes these statistics accessible via your phone. But is it useful to have this data on the go? Or does this app simply appeal to our baser fears and curiosities? We took a look at the app to find out.
Offender Locator, from ThinAir Wireless, is an iPhone App (iTunes link) that uses the GPS on your iPhone to locate registered sex offenders living near your current location. It also allows you to see if any registered offenders live near contacts in your address book and lets you manually look up a specific address. If the app discovers any registered sex offenders nearby, it displays a photo and the offense(s) they have committed.
Offenders displayed on map.
(Credit: ThinAir Wireless)We tested the app in Texas, and found Offender Locator to be fairly accurate compared with records kept by the local state government. The app displayed registered sex offenders on a map, pinpointing our location with a green bubble and the offenders' with red bubbles.
Unfortunately, the map isn't interactive, or at least not in the way we would have liked. You can pinch, zoom, and scroll the map, but you can't access the offender information by tapping one of the red bubbles. For now, you can only access the offender information (name, address, photo, crimes committed) from the Offender List screen.
The app is currently available in two versions: the lite version (iTunes link) is free, but lists only 10 offenders, has advertising, and limits you to five searches per day. The full version (iTunes link) costs 99 cents and has no limits. The app is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch running OS 2.0 or later.
Do you really want to know how creepy your neighbors might be? Is the information this app provides way too much information for most folks? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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1. Not all people accused of a crime are guilty. Many men are accused by ex-wives who use is as a custody tool. Many people in prison are being found by DNA that they were wrongfully convicted.
2. Knowing where an offender lives / works offers a false sense of security. If a person is going to grab a random child, he is not going to take them to a listed address, nor is he going to look for a victim around his house / work that is registered.
3. Not everyone who commits a sexual offense is listed. Many get deals that don't require listing.
4. Some offenders commit minor acts like urinating in public when drunk and now must register. just because a person is listed doesn't mean they hunt children even if it lists them a child offender. All this means is a child as the one who reported the person urinating.
5. I truly understand the long term affects of abuse. However, the constitution doesn't allow for laws to be created that selectively outcasts any group or minority. Laws must be applied to all people. This means that if you have a registry for sex offenders than you need one for EVERY crime, including civil and criminal. Anyone out there make a mistake and get a dui? a reckless opp? want whack job pseudo-Christians beating down your door?
6. Crimes committed = punishments served. You rob someone you get 2 years, you have paid your debit back. A registry is a never ending punishment.
7. Would you rather have a no working, homeless offender that is now high risk because he no longer cares about anything living in your community or would you rather have them working, paying taxes and able to reintegrate with the communities help? At least there is a chance to make them want to seek help and change. Take away hope and you kill that chance.
Those of you that think "Kill all offenders" or "lock them away" don't realize that most crimes against children are done by unknown family or related people. Not all offenders rape and children and if you had to pick, would you want an offender in treatment living in your community or one without the help he/she needs?
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by Remalith
August 7, 2009 7:40 AM PDT
- @rnot1 - While I would never say that this type of crime does not cause significant mental and emotional trauma, I think that all crimes cause a great deal of trauma to the victims and/or the family of the victim. Certainly this is true of violent crimes. Many times family members of murdered victims never get over the emotional toll that comes with the sudden loss of a loved one. Even in cases where the victim is not killed the repercussions can extend a lifetime. Both in terms of physical malady and mental trauma. Also simple crimes such as robbery, burglar, and muggings can leave their victims with a permanent fear that such a crime can happen to them again at any time. These are not always cases where the property can simply 'be replaced and become whole again' as you suggest. I would also suppose that victimized children are more severely impacted due to their limited ability to understand the crime and why it happened to them. But, in truth, I have no real evidence to support that supposition. With the above in mind, I believe that tracking of offenders should be an all or nothing proposition. I personally would support tracking of offenders of all types, but for some kind of definable limit. To me the easiest and most reasonable suggestion seems to be a database for tracking parolees. Thus, all releases criminals would be able to be tracked for a time. While this may not be an optimal solution it does save time and effort in going back and establishing extra guidelines for every crime. This also eliminates the debate over whether the tracking period should be established by the sentencing judge or by the parole board.
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by rnot1
August 8, 2009 8:54 AM PDT
- I don't doubt that everyone, including yourself, have very good points. The all or nothing rules= makes sense, but on a practical standpoint we all know would never happen. My response was simply not to diminish the offense of sexual predators. Just like any other crimes, there are innocent people out there, but remember there are some that were rightfully prosecuted. I would much rather take the chance to use this information as reference rather than not knowing at all.
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(14 Comments)We can have a healthy debate on which this application is based on, but the real question is, is it a useful app. If we can remove the content this app is reporting and replace it with traffic, gas prices, weather, political representative, entertainment paparazzi , almost anything we can think of, wouldn't it still be just a tool ? Some might find it useful and some may find it offensive, but simply makes already accessible information that much more easier than before. We're going to see many more apps like this in the future.