Tennessee § 40-39-305 - Fees — Waiver of fees.

§ 40-39-305. Fees — Waiver of fees.

The department of correction is authorized to assess a daily or monthly fee, as the department deems reasonable and necessary to effectuate the purposes of this program, from serious offenders and violent sexual offenders who are required by the board or the department to participate in the sexual offender monitoring program described in § 40-39-302. This fee is intended to offset only the costs associated with the time-correlated tracking of the geographic location of subjects using the location tracking crime correlation system. Fees assessed by the department pursuant to this program may be collected in accordance with § 40-39-302(b)(2)(A). The department may waive all or any portion of the fees required by this section if it determines that an offender is indigent or financially unable to pay all or any portion of the fee. The department shall waive only that portion of the surcharge which the offender is financially unable to pay. Acts 2004, ch. 899, § 5; 2012, ch. 727, § 53. Compiler's Notes. Acts 2004, ch. 899, § 1 provided that the act shall be known and may be cited as the “Tennessee Serious and Violent Sex Offender Monitoring Pilot Project Act.” Acts 2004, ch. 899, § 2 provided that: “(a) It is the intent of the general assembly in enacting the ‘Tennessee Serious and Violent Sex Offender Monitoring Pilot Project Act’ to utilize the latest technological solutions to monitor and track serious criminal offenders and violent sex offenders in a limited number of counties selected for the purpose of providing a cross-section of Tennessee in terms of location, population and geography. “(b) In addition to providing this state with a more efficient and accurate method of monitoring and tracking these serious and predatory criminals, the purpose of the pilot project is to collect at least twelve (12) months of data on the experience of such a monitoring and tracking system in this state. This data will better enable the governor and general assembly to accurately determine the success or failure of such a program, whether it is worth the expenditure necessary to administer it and whether to expand the pilot project into a statewide program.” Acts 2004, ch. 899, § 3 provided that: “The general assembly hereby finds and declares the following: “(a) The United States department of justice has published confirmed statistics that over sixty percent (60%) of serious and violent sex offenders in state prisons have a prior conviction history and that the number of prisoners convicted for violent sexual assault has increased by an annual percentage of fifteen percent (15%) each year since 1980; “(b) Criminals who commit serious and violent sexual crimes have shown unusually high recidivism rates, thereby posing an unacceptable level of risk to the community; “(c) Intensive supervision of serious offenders and violent sex offenders is a crucial element to both the rehabilitation of the released convict and the safety of the surrounding community; “(d) Mature technological solutions now exist to provide improved supervision and behavioral control of serious offenders and violent sex offenders following their release; “(e) These solutions can now also provide law enforcement and correctional professionals with significant new tools for electronic correlation of the constantly-updated geographic location of supervised serious offenders and violent sexual offenders following their release with the geographic location of reported crimes, both to possibly link released offenders to crimes or to possibly exclude released offenders from ongoing criminal investigations; and “(f) Continuous twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week electronic monitoring of those convicted of serious and violent sexual offenses is a valuable and reasonable requirement for those convicts who are placed on probation; who have failed to register as a sexual offender as required by law; or who have been released from incarceration while they remain under the active supervision of the department of correction, the board of probation and parole, or other state and local agencies.” For the Preamble to the act concerning the transfer of certain functions relating to probation and parole services and the community correction grant program from the board of probation and parole to the department of correction, please refer to Acts 2012, ch. 727. Acts 2012, ch. 727, § 63 provided that the implementation of the act, which amended this section, shall be fully accomplished on or before January 1, 2013. Law Reviews. GPS Monitoring of Domestic Violence Offenders in Tennessee: Generating Problems Surreptitiously (Natalie Fox Malone), 43 U. Mem. L. Rev. 171 (2012).