During the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, lots of criminals wound up among good people on buses and in shelters. Still others used the occasion as an opportunity to get out of town and not come back. In Texas they think they have a solution for both those problems.
The Houston Chronicle story headlined: “Next time, evacuees subject to criminal checks,” leads with the following. “Texans seeking to escape the next hurricane or state emergency by evacuation bus will first be submitted to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director says.”
There are several different ways you might want to respond to this story. One is to imagine a rank of buses with signs on them. “Special Needs” one might say. Another bus would be marked for “The Elderly.” And there would be a bus for “Criminals, Parolees, and Other Evil Doers.”
That was my first reaction. I imagined a scene like a giant school field trip, but with different signs on the buses. Then, I got to thinking about how all this was going to work
I like the intent of what Texas wants to do. The idea is to keep vulnerable people like children, the disabled, and the elderly safe from predators. Fair enough. But how’s it going to work in practice? Let’s consider the details.
ATT has contracted with the state to create a system that will provide scannable wristbands for evacuees. Identification information will be entered at the evacuation assembly point. The wristbands will be scanned when a person gets on a bus and scanned again when they get to a shelter so people can be tracked. Data will be linked to the state computer system.
Does anyone other than the people selling this system and the bureaucrats buying it think it will work when the pressure’s on and the wind is blowing? I doubt it. But there’s an even bigger problem with the idea.
The plan calls for checking the data from the wristbands against databases like the sex offender registry. That sounds good, too, except that wearing the wristbands is voluntary. All a criminal has to do so the system won’t track him is not wear a wristband.
I don’t know what this system cost the good citizens of Texas, but it sounds like a colossal waste of money to me.