720 ILCS 5/11-9.2 – Custodial Sexual Misconduct
This law makes it a crime for correctional, law enforcement, or supervision employees to have sexual contact with people under their custody or control.
This Illinois law says that employees in jails, prisons, or other custody facilities–and probation or parole officers–cannot have sexual contact with the people they supervise or guard. The law treats these acts as serious crimes and removes the offender from their job.
(a) A crime happens when someone working in a jail, treatment center, or law enforcement job has sexual contact or intercourse with a person in their custody or control.
(b) Probation officers, parole officers, surveillance agents, or aftercare specialists also break this law if they have sexual contact or intercourse with a person they supervise or are responsible for.
(c) Sentence: This crime is a Class 3 felony.
(d) If someone is convicted, they immediately lose their job in law enforcement, corrections, treatment, or release programs.
(e) Consent is not a defense–people under custody or supervision are considered unable to agree to such acts.
(f) This law does not apply if:
- The employee is legally married to the person before that person entered custody.
- The employee did not know and had no reason to know the person was in custody.
(g) Key terms used in this law include:
- 5 Aftercare specialist: A person who helps supervise youth released from juvenile custody.
- Custody: Includes jail, prison, parole, probation, detention, home confinement, and similar situations.
- Penal system: Any system involving state or local detention facilities or juvenile homes.
- Treatment and detention facility: A state center for people held under sex offender treatment laws.
- Conditional release: A program where someone committed under sex offender laws lives in the community with supervision and treatment.
- Employee: Anyone who works for or is contracted by a government agency responsible for supervising or housing people in custody.
- Law enforcement agency: Police or other agencies that enforce laws or detain people (not including prosecutors).
- Sexual conduct or penetration: Any sexual act as defined in 720 ILCS 5/11-0.1.
- Probation officer: A person who supervises people on probation.
- Supervising officer: A person who oversees people on parole or supervised release.
- Surveillance agent: A person who monitors people conditionally released under sex offender laws.
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