Part I.

Overview: The Management of the Sex Offender: The Multiple Needs of the Field And the Many Roles the Federal Government Might Play

Background

The National Summit: Promoting Public Safety Through the Effective Management of Sex Offenders in the Community was held November 24-26, 1996, in Washington, D.C. The format of the Summit was a mix of plenary presentations by topical experts and facilitated working groups. One of the primary purposes of the event was for participants to provide recommendations to the Office of Justice Programs on the training and technical assistance needs of the field. Thus, the focus of the event was largely on the work of the Summit participants.

Summit participants were divided into ten working groups that remained together over the entire event. Nine of these were general; one was devoted exclusively to the issues of juvenile sex offenders. Participants were assigned to the nine general groups in advance to assure that each one had a representative mix of disciplines and geography. Each work group had a facilitator and at least one planning group member. The facilitator captured the significant points of each discussion and the final recommendations on a flipchart. Each group voted on its recommendations during the final session so that we could have a sense of the importance participants attached to their various suggestions. All of these flipchart sheets were returned to us, were transcribed, and form the basis for this report. In addition, the recommendations that follow include suggestions from the topical round tables and a few presenters whose remarks consisted primarily of recommendations.

Overview of the Recommendations

We have divided the recommendations into three main categories:

• Knowledge Development and Dissemination
• Training and Technical Assistance
• Public Education and Acceptance

As has been requested, we have placed the recommendations into bulleted lists in each category. We have listed them according to the importance placed on them by the work groups in their "voting". We avoided interpreting -- we have tried to stay as faithful as possible to the language from their discussions while also combining essentially the same recommendations made by more than one group.

In examining the recommendations of the work groups and the points from the discussions that preceded them, and reflecting on the larger picture that they present of the perceived needs of the field, we have realized that the responses the Summit participants are asking for are quite complex. Those responses require many different kinds of actions, over differing time frames, and are aimed at multiple levels of government and the public at the same time. Given the complexity of the task of managing sex offenders within the context of our current political climate, this complexity of needs should not be surprising.

We believe that the recommendations, when taken together as a whole, present a rich, dynamic, and full strategy for creating the optimal set of conditions for the effective management of sex offenders in our midst. To understand how full it is, however, requires looking beyond the lists of recommendations. As requested, Summit participants have provided specific, concrete recommendations. Each one is, therefore, by definition only a piece of a larger whole. We have attempted to describe briefly the overall strategy, including a summary diagram. The diagram is, of course, only a two-dimensional representation of a far more complex scheme.

To make the best use of the strategy offered by the Summit's recommendations will require a much fuller examination and discussion. What follows is a brief overview.

The Targets of Assistance

The efforts to manage sex offenders safely in the community go on at many levels of the government and within different public and community contexts. Because each one makes the others possible, the Summit participants are asking for assistance with all of them at the same time.

1. At the most basic level, effective sex offender management begins at the individual case management stage. It involves a case team of a treatment provider, a probation or parole officer, local law enforcement officers, and perhaps representatives of a victims' organization. The team operates within a local neighborhood or town where the offenders lives and/or works.

   That team needs substantive assistance on management and treatment strategies, on working together as a team, and on involving and working with the community.

   The community needs to be educated about sex offenders and about taking care of their own and their children's safety.

2. The work of that team happens in the context of the city, town, or county's criminal justice system, local government, victims' organizations, and health care and social service delivery systems. Those agencies must work together to determine local policies, practices, and use of resources that permit the case team to do their work and to have the tools that they need.

   That local policy group needs basic education on sex offenders and effective management strategies; they need assistance on working together as a policy group, on creating the inter-agency agreements and policies needed for effective management, and on educating their citizens.

   The county, city, or town's citizens need education about sex offenders and about the best use of resources to manage them.

3. Much of what happens on the local level is made possible by the laws, policies, and funding decisions at the state level. Criminal laws, sentencing parameters and options, registration and notification laws, confidentiality laws, parental rights, parole conditions, funding of resources, and many other critical dimensions are determined by state legislators, governors, and state agency directors.

   These state-level policymakers need basic education on sex offenders, their effective management, and the impact of ineffective management and dispositions on the rest of the system. They need opportunities to understand the impact of their laws, policies, and funding priorities on the safety of the community, and on the line staff throughout the criminal justice, social service, and mental health systems.

4. All the actors and agencies, whether state, local, or community-level, whose work impacts these issues are represented by national organizations. The individuals in those positions are heavily influenced by the opinions and activities of their national organizations.

   The national associations, coalitions, and organizations need to be educated about sex offenders and their effective management, and about the role of their constituencies in that management. They need assistance to educate their memberships so that their members will be open to receiving the education and assistance provided at the local and state level.

The assistance needed as identified by Summit participants falls into three general categories:

1. Knowledge development and dissemination. Participants identified several areas that need additional or original research. More urgently required, however, is the compilation of existing knowledge and information, and its packaging and dissemination in a wide variety of formats and settings to reach all of the different audiences described above. Videotapes, information briefs, short articles, clearinghouses, and personal case studies were just some of the vehicles suggested.

2. Training and technical assistance. Training and education needs vary according to the kinds of decisions that the individuals are called upon to make. These range from intense substantive training for treatment providers and probation and parole officers, to basic education for legislators. Other policymakers and decision makers, like judges, prosecutors, and mental health agency directors, need substantive education. Training needs to be provided in both single-discipline settings and to multi-disciplinary teams. These need to be provided simultaneously: That is, judges, prosecutors and legislators need to be attending educational sessions at their annual conferences, while receiving complementary training and technical assistance in their roles as members of working groups, commissions, or policy groups.

   The content and format of the training must also be varied to respond to the different pressures, experiences, and responsibilities of the audiences. Legislatures, for example, need short, easily remembered facts, examples, and anecdotes that they can readily relay to their constituencies. Law enforcement officers, on the other hand, will respond more readily to case studies of actual offenders who resemble the all-too-human faces they see every day, and to the acknowledgment of their key roles in crime investigations and initial victim contact.

   Like training, technical assistance must respond to differing needs related to roles and responsibilities. An elected prosecutor is both a public official with a fearful electorate to reassure and an agency director with many employees to direct and guide and with other agencies to negotiate critical working relationships. Police captains have to direct criminal investigations and lead community meetings. Judges have to sentence individual cases and work with prosecutors and probation chiefs to create policies on supervision and revocations.

3. Public education and acceptance. Everyone who works with, on, or about sex offenders needs help with educating the public. From the police chief charged with community notification to the legislator appropriating funds for treatment rather than a new prison, they all need assistance in getting real information to everyday, fearful citizens and to their own peers who influence those citizens. This means having articles in police, prosecutor, and legislators' newsletters and magazines; it requires easy-to-reproduce fact sheets, judicial training sessions, speakers for PTA meetings, and videos to show at community meetings.

Because of the interdependence of all of these efforts, timing is crucial. If probation and parole officers are going to be encouraged to work in a collaborative manner with treatment providers, local police officers, and victims' groups, then the heads of all of those agencies have to understand the value of a collaborative approach. If local policy groups of judges, prosecutors, probation chiefs, social service and health care agency directors, and local government officials are to receive training on the collaborative approach and making needed inter-agency agreements then those individual policymakers have to know why they should agree to attend such training. Clearly, much early work must be done to prepare key constituency groups for later efforts.

Similarly, if longitudinal research is to be most useful, the sooner it is begun the more helpful it will be.

The Recommendations

The specific recommendations within the three categories are listed below. As indicated, we believe these are best appreciated within the context of the overall strategy described briefly above.

Overview of Recommendations on Training for Targeted Audiences (click to view chart)