CENTER FOR SEX OFFENDER MANAGEMENT
The Effective Management of Juvenile Sex Offenders in the Community
A Training Curriculum

 A Project of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice

 

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Section 5: Supervision
2 Hours

TOPIC: SUPERVISION

Part III: Supervision Strategies

To complete this section of the training, we’re going to talk about some specific strategies that can be useful when supervising juvenile sex offenders, including:

• Identifying and working with members of community support networks. We’ll focus here on parents and caregivers, and then spend a few minutes on engaging the schools.
• Establishing specialized caseloads for this population.
• Considering the use of the polygraph as a supervision tool.
• Responding to supervision non–compliance.

Community Support Networks

As we’ve acknowledged several times during this training, collaborative partnerships between supervision officers and positive social supports such as parents and caregivers, school representatives, mentors, members of the faith community, and other volunteers are important. In addition, adolescents in general—and juvenile offenders more specifically—tend not to be the most trustworthy reporters of information at all times, so it’s important for supervision officers to identify others who are involved in their lives who can confirm or refute what these youth disclose to us.

Members of community support networks can assume a host of key responsibilities related to promoting and supporting the success of juvenile sex offenders, including:²⁹

• Serving as role models by demonstrating positive, non–abusive, respectful behavior, and actively encouraging and supporting the same type of behavior in juveniles;
• Facilitating juveniles’ participation in prosocial activities;
• Providing positive reinforcement when juveniles comply with the expectations associated with supervision and treatment;
• Assisting juveniles to use and assimilate the skills and knowledge that they are learning in treatment into their daily lives;
• Staying on the lookout for and taking action when high risk behaviors and situations occur (and before a relapse or violation occurs); and
• Communicating honestly and regularly with supervision officers regarding identified concerns as well as what is going particularly well in the juveniles’ lives.

Certainly then, when community supports have been identified, supervision officers must work to ensure that they are familiar with the principles and expectations of both offense–specific treatment and specialized supervision. After all, juvenile sex offender management is not likely to be a field with which they are very familiar.

In the State of Colorado, for example, members of community support networks are specially trained by supervision officers, social service representatives, and treatment providers to serve as “informed supervisors.”³⁰ Every juvenile sex offender has at least one informed supervisor (and in most cases many more) who carries out the responsibilities that I just outlined and who participates regularly in multidisciplinary team meetings with the juvenile justice system actors and other professionals who help manage these youth in the community.³¹

Parents and Caregivers: Critical Collaborative Partners

Parents and caregivers are perhaps the most logical and influential examples of community support network members for juvenile sex offenders.³² Most youth are dependent on them and most parents or caregivers want to do the right thing for their kids. However, it isn’t always easy to get parents or caregivers on board, as there are a host of factors that may impact their willingness and ability to partner with us in the ways that many of us hope and expect. These include:³³

• The sometimes complex and very overwhelming nature of the juvenile justice and social services systems. These systems can be quite difficult to navigate, and can be frustrating and de–motivating for parents. They can seem complicated to us as system actors, so imagine how confusing and difficult they may be for juveniles and their parents or caregivers.
• There may be multiple expectations for parents or caregivers that are established by different agencies and individuals, and are sometimes duplicative. If we’re not careful, we can overwhelm families with the expectations that we place on them. Being involved with multiple agencies or professionals can be anxiety–provoking and embarrassing. What parent or caregiver wants several outside agencies in their homes telling them what they should be doing?
• Previous negative experiences with “the system” may inhibit participation. Prior difficult encounters with the juvenile or criminal justice systems can reduce parents’ and caregivers’ desire and interest in participating in the supervision and management process.
• Professionals may make inaccurate assumptions about the family’s willingness to participate helpfully in the process. Assuming that families won’t be cooperative and helpful, and approaching them in a skeptical and accusatory manner, makes it much less likely that our efforts to engage and work with them will be successful and constructive.
• There is a considerable stigma associated with sex offending. Just imagine if you had a child who was a sex offender. How comfortable would you feel communicating with others—who are strangers—about the problem?
• Some of the dynamics of families of juvenile sex offenders are less than ideal. There may be substance abuse, inter–generational sexual victimization and physical abuse, and problematic boundaries, among other issues, that can negatively impact a family’s willingness to engage. In addition, parents and caregivers may not be particularly good at establishing and consistently maintaining appropriate structure, discipline, and behavioral limits in the family environment, which impacts their capacity to support our supervision efforts.
• Juvenile sex offenders and their victims may be in the same family. As a result, parents/caregivers may struggle a great deal with balancing the needs of both parties. It may cause them to feel as if they must “choose” one child over another.

So given all these factors, it’s unrealistic not to expect some parental or caregiver denial and resistance to supervision and treatment. Although these reactions can be short–lived and fleeting, they can also be made worse by the development of adversarial, confrontational, and negative relationships with the system. Such patterns, once they are established, are difficult to break.

To facilitate the engagement and participation of parents or caregivers, it’s critical that officers interact with them in an empathic, respectful, supportive, and firm manner. And family members and caregivers should be approached as critical collaborators.³⁴

In addition, it’s important to remember that juvenile supervision officers are often the “face” of the juvenile justice system. Of all system actors, they probably interact most frequently with youth and their parents or caregivers, so they are very well–positioned to have a significant influence on how positive and productive—or negative and difficult—their experiences are with the system, and how likely they are to be cooperative with and supportive of supervision and treatment.

How do you deal with parental and caregiver denial and resistance?

(ALLOW FOR AUDIENCE RESPONSES.)

Here are a few quick pointers for you to keep in mind:

• Be patient. Denial and resistance aren’t just going to go away completely after one or two meetings with parents or caregivers. Expect that they will last for a time and work to decrease them slowly—measured, consistent progress is much better than no progress.
• Educate. Educate parents and caregivers about why their acknowledgement that a problem exists is so important and the ways in which they can be a part of the solution to it.
• Normalize the denial and resistance process. Let parents and caregivers know that their strong reactions to the situation are okay and that one of your roles is to assist them to get through them in constructive ways that benefit all parties.
• Process the potential underlying contributors to the denial and resistance.
  • Be sure to label the behavior, not the youth. In other words, remind parents or caregivers that just because their child committed a sex offense doesn’t mean that he is a bad person. Rather, he committed an act for which he must be held accountable and for which he will be required to comply with the supervision process and to participate in treatment. Let parents know that they can play a very significant role in ensuring that their child is responsive to the expectations of the juvenile justice system and receives the services that he needs to be successful and not reoffend.
• Stress that having a child who commits a sex offense does not make the parents or caregivers bad parents/caregivers. Emphasize that the most productive thing that they can do to remedy and address the difficult situation is to participate in and support supervision and treatment.
• Teach parents about sex offending behavior and debunk common myths (e.g., all sex offenders recidivate and are destined for a life of crime, juveniles who commit sex offenses always go on to perpetrate as adults, etc.).
• Ask parents to talk with you about their fears and concerns, and take the time to respond to and begin to address them.
• Provide them with clear, comprehensive, and consistent information about:
  • The court process and the larger juvenile justice system;
• The various components of your jurisdiction’s approach to juvenile sex offender management;
• The specific expectations (of them and of their child) associated with supervision (explain your role as a supervision officer and the family members’ roles as collaborative partners in the community management process); and
• The significant benefits of cooperation and the major costs associated with failure.
• Identify common ground and common goals. For example, supervision officers and parents or caregivers probably both want the juvenile to be successful. In addition, no one wants the juvenile to offend again. Discussions about these kinds of goals and how to achieve them can be very motivating to parents or caregivers.
• Offer parent or caregiver education classes and support groups—or make referrals to them. These forums can provide parents and caregivers with valuable information and new skills, and make available safe havens where they can interact with others who are having similar experiences. As you can imagine, having a child who has committed a sex offense can be a very isolating experience.