Section 1: Introduction
1 Hour, 25 Minutes
TOPIC: AN INTRODUCTION
TO VICTIM–CENTERED SEX OFFENDER MANAGEMENT
(15 minutes)
Around the country, the most promising sex offender management practices are based on two basic premises:
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Slide #8: Premises of Sex Offender Management
- A multi–disciplinary, collaborative approach to sex offender management is more effective than the work that any one discipline can do alone; and
- It is necessary to place the safety needs of victims and the community at the forefront of our sex offender management strategies.
Additionally, working together provides the community a model for how to respond to the problem of sexual violence. In terms of supervision, the focus on the safety needs of victims is not so much a new approach as it is a recommitment to established criminal justice goals. Community supervision has always been about protecting the community from crime—including past and potential victims. Our practices are based on certain assumptions about what that means. With most offenders, we assume that compliance with rules about employment, keeping appointments, and attending treatment or other assigned activities means that the offender is not actively engaged in a criminal lifestyle and is not committing new crimes—but sex offenders are different. We have learned from experience that the above behaviors are necessary but not sufficient. Just because sex offenders appear to be complying with supervision conditions does not mean that they are not engaging in sex offending behavior, and that even seemingly compliant behavior must still be scrutinized. For this particular kind of offender, we need a particular kind of approach. One aspect of that approach is a recommitment to placing the safety needs of victims and the community at the forefront of our strategy, or taking a victim–centered approach. So how do we do that?
A victim–centered approach is both a philosophy of offender management and a method of offender management.
Note: The point about the continuity of goals may be less true for treatment providers who have had to make a more active shift in their perspective away from seeing only the individual client as their responsibility to seeing the client in the context of the community where he poses a danger. The point is the same, however; that the behavior of sex offenders is unique and therefore requires a victim–centered perspective.
- As a philosophy, the victim–centered approach requires that we understand that although the offender may be our client, we must consider victims and the community to be our customers and integral stakeholders in the process. We know that sex offenders are manipulative and deceptive. When we remember that our job includes the safety of victims and potential victims, we recognize that it is not sufficient to monitor and ensure the compliance of sex offenders based on their word alone, or on the behavior they present to us. In order to ensure safety, we must involve others and we must recognize the ongoing risk that offenders may pose to victims and the community. From this philosophical perspective, it makes complete sense why we would look to victims and victim advocates to inform our policies and strategies—because they are most acutely aware of the dangers that sex offenders pose in general and/or an individual sex offender poses in particular. The philosophy of the victim–centered approach is thus a way of thinking about our work that acknowledges the unique risks posed by sex offenders and the unique strategies that are needed to address those risks.
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Slide #9: Victim–Centered Approach as a Philosophy
Note: One model management process that you may have heard about, documented by English, Pullen, and Jones (1996), is called “The Containment Approach.” It describes a team approach that includes supervision, treatment, and polygraph to contain the behavior of sex offenders.3 Victim advocates are not explicitly included in this early formulation, but it is conceptually consistent with what we are describing here as a victim–centered approach.
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Slide #10: Victim–Centered Approach as a Method
The victim–centered approach is also a method—it means putting the philosophy into practice. There are three dimensions to the process of implementing this method, or three different ways in which we must alter our thinking and our approach.
- We begin with the practical implementation of that new philosophy. With our lens expanded to include victims, we must reframe the questions that guide our decision making. Thus, rather than only asking ourselves as we have traditionally done, “What is best for the offender?” or “What is the best way to control this offender?”, we also must ask, “What is best to maxmimize saftety for the victim and for potential victims in the community?”. This question serves as a guide as we make both policy decisions and individual case decisions. Sometimes the answers will be the same, but sometimes they will be vastly different. For example, the best way to control a particular offender may be to place him back in a former job where the supervisor is familiar with his background and his modus operandi (M.O.), and has agreed to cooperate with the supervision plan. If one of the offender’s victims also works there, that may present, however, a conflict between what is best for monitoring the offender and what is best for the victim would arise, and under a victim–centered approach, the decision would likely be made to forbid the offender from working there.
- Another dimension of the victim–centered approach is broadening our multi–disciplinary approach to sex offender management to include victim advocates. Victim advocates are professionals who can help ensure that the general concerns of victims are addressed in the protocols that we establish to deal with sex offenders, and that the policies we design are victim–friendly. They can be of vital importance in holding criminal justice and treatment professionals accountable for implementing a victim–centered approach.
Whether we decide to create an informal relationship through which we confer with advocates on policy issues or on difficult case decisions, or we create a more formal structure whereby advocates are part of the jurisdiction’s sex offender management policy team, or we decide to include a victim advocate with the treatment provider and polygraph examiner as part of our individual case management team, the important thing is that those responsible for supervising sex offenders create an alliance with victim advocates that informs the way sex offenders are managed in the community. (We will talk more about this in the next section.)
- Victim advocates can also play an important role in the implementation of the third dimension of the victim–centered method, which is the incorporation of victim input and involvement. Like the addition of victim advocates to our multi–disciplinary approach to sex offender management, victim input can be incorporated into our approach to sex offender management in many different ways. The essential element is that victim input is sought out and used to help those responsible to provide supervision and treatment staff make decisions in the management of individual sex offenders. The input could come from a written victim impact statement that was taken at the time of sentencing. It could come from the statement of a victim at a parole hearing. It could come from having an advocate make contact with victims whose offenders are recently placed on community supervision to find out more about their current situation and concerns. Or it could come from victims calling when they have information to share about offenders’ compliance with the conditions of his supervision. In some jurisdictions, a victim advocate is part of the case management team, and is the one who initiates contact with the victim, accompanies the supervision officer on offender home visits as another set of eyes that may recognize something the officer may not (given their different perspectives and backgrounds), and participates in the planning and management of individual cases in order to best protect victims. Each jurisdiction, working with local advocates, makes the decisions about how to best solicit and use victim input.
Note: Define “case management team” for any participants unfamiliar with the term.
A case management team is a group of individuals who can augment the management provided by a supervision officer. A case management team typically consists of a supervision agent, the offender’s treatment provider, and a polygraph examiner. However, variations of these teams exist in communities around the nation. The use of the case management team allows the probation officer to communicate routinely with others who are familiar with the offender’s day–to–day activities.
Working effectively with victims also includes paying attention to the secondary impacts of sexual assault on those close to the victim. Individuals who experience harm by knowing or caring for the victim are usually family members (but may include friends, relatives, acquaintances, and members of the community), who have been significantly affected by the victim’s experience, whether through damage to their own relationships with the offender, or by their secondary experience of the victim’s pain. When we work to manage the perpetrators of child sexual abuse, for example, we may also become involved with the victim’s parents, who may themselves experience a certain level of trauma. This is especially true for incest victims and their non–offending parents, or parents of sibling incest offenders and victims whose home lives may have been severely disrupted and permanently altered by the disclosure of sexual abuse. Although we will spend more time later in the training talking about both primary victims and those who experience harm through their connection to the victim, it’s important to recognize that when we discuss including victim input, we need to include all of these individuals in our thinking.
Many jurisdictions doing this work are finding that the offender’s family members (whether the victim is a family member or not) are another group of individuals significantly impacted by the offenders’ actions, whose participation in the healing process is essential. When family members are in denial, they may permit the offender to have contact with potential victims. They may also be among those to experience the impact of a negative community response to the offender returning home. How we educate and include primary victims and those closest to them in what we do can have considerable impact on the effectiveness of sex offender management.
To summarize then, the victim–centered approach is:
- A philosophy that places the safety of victims and potential victims at the forefront of how we manage sex offenders in the community; and
- A method of sex offender management that requires us to consider and incorporate three new dimensions into our multi–disciplinary approach: examining each policy or case management decision through a client lens that asks about the potential impact of those policies and decisions on victims and/or what is best for the victim(s); including victim advocates as part of the sex offender management team; and seeking victim input to inform individual case management strategies.