On Good Authority

              – 1 –
Specialized sex offender
probation in Cook County
links supervision, treatment
On Good Authority
Vol. 4, No. 7
March 2001
On Good Authority is a periodic
briefing on trends and issues in
criminal justice program evaluation.
This report was written by staff
Research Analyst Sharyn Adams. It is a
summary of a program evaluation of
the Cook County Adult Sex Offender
Probation Project. The evaluation was
conducted by Magnus Seng, Ph.D., and
Loretta Stalans, Ph.D., of Loyola
University Chicago. Copies of the
evaluation are available from the
Authority’s Research and Analysis Unit.
The Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority is a state
agency dedicated to improving the
administration of criminal justice in
Illinois. The basic functions of the
Authority are criminal justice research,
federal and state grants administration,
and information systems development
and support.
For more information, or for copies of
this or other publications, contact the
Authority at (312) 793-8550, or visit
our Web site at www.icjia.state.il.us.
The evaluation was supported by grant
# 97-DB-MU-0017 and #98-DB-MU-0017
awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance,
Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of
Justice. Points of view in this document do not
necessarily represent the official position or
policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Printed by authority of the State of Illinois,
March 2001. Printing order #01-196; 3,000
copies.
George H. Ryan
Governor
Peter B. Bensinger
Chairman
Candice M. Kane
Executive Director
ILLINOIS
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
INFORMATION AUTHORITY
Across the nation, jurisdictions
have begun to address the
limitations of standard probation
in supervising sex offenders. Intensive
supervision programs that combine
treatment and home visits are considered
a viable alternative to standard sex
offender probation.
The Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority, using Federal
Anti-Drug Abuse Act funds, awarded a
grant to the Cook County Adult Proba-tion
Department to develop a specialized
intensive supervision sex offender unit.
Implemented in 1996, the Adult Sex
Offender Probation (ASOP) Project is an
intensive supervision probation project
for offenders convicted of felony sex
offenses against minors. The project is
based on the containment approach, a
nationally recognized, intensive supervi-sion
and community-based probation
model with three major components,
including:
• Intensive supervision of offenders,
which includes frequent searches of the
offender’s home and verification of
information verbally obtained from
offenders.
• Group therapy treatment supple-mented
with individual counseling.
• A partnership between probation
officers and treatment providers that
includes frequent communication and
information sharing on specific
offenders.
Background
The Cook County ASOP began screening
cases in March 1997 and received its first
sentenced offender in April 1997. The
main distinction between sex offenders
on regular probation and ASOP is that
ASOP project participants are selected
using specifically identified criteria, are
subject to increased levels of supervision
and surveillance, and must participate in
a sex offender treatment program.
Four specially trained ASOP officers
supervise offenders selected for the
project. A sex offender caseload of
between 25 to 35 cases per officer, which
would allow sufficient time for increased
supervision and surveillance of offend-ers,
was the capacity goal for the ASOP
Project.
The ASOP unit was designed to
include eligibility screening before an
offender was sentenced and accepted into
the unit. Only 25 percent of 81 cases
reviewed followed the formal screening
process, while the remaining cases were
directly sentenced by judges into the
project without pre-screening. Despite
the deviation from the original design,
no substantively significant differences
existed between offenders who were
screened and those who were directly
sentenced. In April 2000, the project
caseload was 108, or 27 cases per officer.
The ASOP probation officers met the
standard of four monthly face-to-face
office contacts, averaging more than six
per offender per month. From May 1999
to December 1999 the probation officers,