Virginia Puts 'Most Wanted' Online
As part of an online national effort to capture elusive criminals, the Virginia Department of Corrections last week placed photos of 16 of its mostwanted parole fugitives in a document available for download from its World Wide Web site, with a brief synopsis of the individuals accompanying mug shots.
The fugitives selected were among those who have been missing the longest. The synopsis includes information including the crime committed, and a description of identifying marks like scars and tattoos. Most of the initial group put online was sex offenders.
One of the 16 has been apprehended, but the Web presence (www.cns.state.va.us/doc) did not contribute to that arrest, said VDOC spokesman Larry Traylor. "The beauty of the Internet is that we can keep this up-to-date and current...and we hope that people in Virginia and across the country can help us find these guys," he said.
Virginia eventually expects to provide real-time updates as fugitives are captured and others are added as well as to make Virginia's entire inmate population searchable online, Traylor said.
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