Center for Sex Offender Management (CSOM)

Overview

The Center for Sex Offender Management (CSOM), led by CEPP from 1996 to 2019, was a national resource center that supported state and local jurisdictions in the effective management of sex offenders under community supervision. CSOM’s primary goal was to enhance public safety by preventing further victimization through improving the management of adult and juvenile sex offenders. CSOM was supported by a variety of offices at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. 

Our Approach

CSOM was a “one-stop” resource center that provided the most current information about effective, responsible practices for managing people convicted of sexual offenses. 

The initiative carried out work in three main areas: developing written resources and products (policy and practice briefs, handbooks, guides), providing specialized training and technical assistance, and supporting grantees working to improve their jurisdictions’ management of people with sex offense convictions. 

Over the course of more than 20 years, CSOM:

• Developed and delivered hundreds of training and technical assistance engagements to thousands of multidisciplinary groups of practitioners and policymakers (judges, courts, parole and probation agencies, treatment providers, legislators, victim advocates, and community providers) around the country. 
• Worked intensively with dozens of state, local, and tribal jurisdictions around the nation to enhance their management of people convicted of sex offenses, supporting tangible changes to policies and practices. Lessons learned from these communities’ efforts were documented and shared for the benefit of other jurisdictions. 
• Created a comprehensive library of written resources that address supervision, treatment, assessment, and other management issues. 
• Synthesized and disseminated complex research findings and provided information about best practices in the management and treatment of this population to justice system practitioners, the media, and the public. 

The Impact

CSOM’s impact was and remains substantial. The project delivered assistance to 49 states and dozens of tribal jurisdictions and territories.

 Over the course of the project, CSOM:

Developed a groundbreaking model (the Comprehensive Approach to Sex Offender Management) that outlined the fundamental principles of a model approach for responding to people convicted of sex offenses. This model was used as the foundation for improvements in hundreds of jurisdictions.

• Provided training and technical assistance in approximately 500 state, local, and tribal jurisdictions—training over 67,000 practitioners and policymakers on a variety of topics related to the management of this population in the community.
• Created a comprehensive library of more than 50 documents designed to inform the field about the management of people who commit sex offenses and to promote innovative and promising practices. 
• Responded to nearly 15,000 information inquiries from the field on issues such as treatment, risk assessment, community supervision, and survivor safety. 
• Worked in close partnership with more than 130 counties, tribes, and states to address their critical needs as they strategically planned and implemented a comprehensive, collaborative approach to managing people convicted of sex offenses who were under community supervision. 
• Managed a website that was visited more than 100 million times, and from which CSOM documents were downloaded more than one million times.

Although the project has formally closed, CSOM continues to provide a critically important service to the field by sharing its resources. A number of guides and practitioner manuals, policy and practice briefs (on key topics such as supervision, assessment, women and young adults who offend sexually, reunifying families, among others) remain available for those seeking guidance.