Juvenile Sex Offender
The agency in which I completed my internship at was the Madison County Probation Department. I was assigned to the Edwardsville Hillsboro Satellite Office. The staff of the Madison County Probation Department is responsible for the supervision and services to both adult and juvenile offenders on probation. They work to rehabilitate offenders by conducting offender risk assessments, enforce the conditions of court orders, and help to ensure that the offenders are aware of the impact of their crime on the victims and the public. Probation officers help judges to decide on the sentence, interview probationers to determine the effectiveness of probation supervision, provide pre-sentence reports on offenders who are charged, and recommend the revocation of probation when necessary. The different fields in which probation officers are specialized in include: intensive supervision, adult offenders, adult sex offenders, juvenile offenders, juvenile sex offenders, and substance abuse offenders. During the course of this paper I will be addressing the issue of risk assessment and how it plays into juvenile sex offender recidivism. According to Hanson (2000), risk assessment is one of the most important and most frequent tasks required of those working with sexual offenders. Risk assessment is important because it shows the level of recidivism for that particular juvenile sex offender. Probation officers who work with juvenile sex offenders make decisions that require some degree of judgment about the level of risk posed by the juvenile. The amount of supervision needed usually depends on the individual’s likelihood to recidivate. Risk assessment instruments classify juveniles into low, medium, and high risk for reoffending and it helps the probation officer to identify those who are more likely to engage in reoffending. In the decision-making process, risk assessments serve as the tool in determining supervision levels for probationers. According to Funk