Thank you for your interest in joining Empowering Registrants as a Parole or Probation Officer! Please take note that the intent of the website is to provide assistance and support to registrants, as well as to provide oversight. Registrants who have established accounts here and participate in the interactive areas of the website are generally looking for support or to provide support to others.

You must be employed by the State of Texas to be approved for an account as a Parole or Probation Officer.
You must provide your official email address (ending in @tdcj.texas.gov) in your account registration so that we can verify your status as a Parole or Probation Officer. We will email this address to obtain this verification and to ensure that no one is attempting to gain fraudulent entry to the website.

We ask that as you provide oversight on the website, and also that you avoid creating the appearance of a hostile environment. Registrants who are currently under community supervision should feel comfortable enough to use you as a resource for any questions or concerns they may have. They should not feel like interactions with you are going to lead to them being violated. Of course, if they do commit violations of their particular terms of supervision on the website, then you have an ethical and legal obligation to address those violations and we shall not interfere with the performance of your duties.

You will have access to moderator controls on the forums and will be able to view all postings there. Please do not delete or edit anything posted by members. Your moderator access is intended to ensure that you have full visibility over all content posted in the forums so you can properly provide oversight.

Should you spot any issues that need to be addressed by website administration, please contact us at [email protected] or text the phone number you will be provided after your account is approved. This number is screened, so please identify yourself in the text message so it does not get filtered as spam.

AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND AND EMPOWERING REGISTRANTS

Empowering Registrants agrees to keep confidential all information that you provide to us for the purpose of establishing an account on the website. No personal information will be sold or transferred to any third party for any purpose unless required by a valid court order, subpoena, or warrant.

Empowering Registrants agrees to ensure that you have access to all areas of the website that registrants can access for the purpose of providing oversight. We further agree to create for you, at your request, a sub-forum under the Parole / Probation forum, to facilitate communication between you and your clients who have accounts on the website. An example use case would be providing updated information that you believe is helpful, useful, or is required for your clients to have.

You agree that your use of the website will be:
1) to ensure that your clients are not engaging in conduct on the website that would constitute a violation of their conditions; and,
2) to assist your clients in an informal, relaxed, and judgment-free setting if they bring any concerns to your attention through the website, with the understanding that you decide what can be addressed through the website and what needs to be addressed in an office visit instead.

The act of publishing this agreement to www.empoweringregistrants.org shall serve as Empowering Registrants’ legal signature to this document and we agree to be bound to it.

Thank you for your interest in joining Empowering Registrants as a therapist! We do recognize that as a licensed therapist, you have particular ethical and legal obligations that govern your conduct in your role as a therapist. As such, we ask that you limit your interactions accordingly.

You must be a licensed SOTP therapist to be approved for an account as a Therapist. You must provide the legal name of the service under which you operate, (Example: Improving Lives Counseling Services, LLC) as well as the email address associated with your service so that we can verify your credentials to ensure that no one is attempting to gain fraudulent access to the website.

We provide a forum called “Therapists Corner” which is intended for registrants to interact with you and other registrants. Only registrants who are actively enrolled in the Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) are eligible for access to this forum. All confidentiality requirements apply to this forum, and registrants will be required to digitally sign a confidentiality agreement before being given access to the forum. You will receive a copy of this agreement for your records. Please only retain copies digitally signed by registrants who are your clients and attend your group sessions.

As you are likely not the only therapist with an account on the website, and understanding that not all registrants have the same therapists, you agree to provide online services in Therapists Corner only to registrants with whom you have an established provider / client relationship.

As a partner with Empowering Registrants, we recognize and respect that you are an independent entity and that you can only provide services which you deem appropriate and you deem is compliant with your ethical obligations on an internet website. You make the final decision as to what services you are able to provide on Empowering Registrants, and what services will need to be handled in normal in-person group meetings or on an individual basis outside of Empowering Registrants. Nothing in these terms is to be construed as to limit your ability to conduct yourself in your professional capacity in any manner.

CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND EMPOWERING REGISTRANTS

In order to confirm a registrant’s eligibility to The Therapists Corner, Empowering Registrants requires a confirmation that a registrant is actively enrolled in SOTP. If a particular registrant digitally signs the confidentiality agreement, you will be asked to provide this confirmation. No other information about the registrant will be solicited, and will be used only to grant the registrant access to the forum. The confidentiality agreement will provide consent from the registrant to permit you to provide us with confirmation that they are, or are not, enrolled in SOTP.

Once we grant the registrant’s access to Therapists Corner, their consent will be automatically withdrawn and will no longer have any affect. In the event their access to Therapists Corner is revoked or they request it to be withdrawn, they will need to sign a new confidentiality agreement if they wish to regain access to the forum.

Empowering Registrants will, to the maximum extent possible, protect registrants’ personal information from unlawful disclosure. Such information includes, but is not limited to:
* Name
* Date of Birth
* SOTP enrollment status
* All forum postings
The methods by which this information is protected includes: limiting access to administrative areas only to authorized personnel, encryption where possible, limiting access to non-public areas of the site only to registered members of the website, and requiring confidentiality agreements where appropriate. Empowering Registrants cannot be responsible for malicious or irresponsible acts committed by third parties, but will take immediate and appropriate action against said actors when we become aware of it. This may, in some cases, involve referral to law enforcement.

Empowering Registrants agrees to create, upon your request, a sub-forum underneath The Therapists Corner for your exclusive use with your clients. We will set permissions and access controls so that only those you authorize will have access to your sub-forum. You also agree that Parole and Probation officers will be provided the appropriate permissions to access this sub-forum to enable them to perform their lawful duties.

Empowering Registrants agrees to provide hosting services for any documents or other information that you wish to be made accessible to registrants, either through your profile page (accessible by all registered members) or through the Therapists Corner (accessible only by enrolled SOTP participants). We further agree to protect these documents, to the maximum extent possible, from unauthorized disclosure. Please take note that we cannot be responsible for what a third party who has authorized access to your hosted content does with it, but we will take appropriate and immediate action to address unauthorized use of it on our website when possible.

You understand that by uploading your proprietary documents to our website, YOU RETAIN ALL COPYRIGHT CLAIMS to your documents and that you provide us with a limited and revocable license to store and make them available in parts of the website of your choosing. Empowering Registrants makes NO CLAIM to ownership of your documents. Your documents belong to you, and you alone.

In the event that you decide to withdraw your participation, Empowering Registrants will, at your request, destroy any and all data that is your intellectual property or other information of yours which may be in our possession.

Empowering Registrants agrees to respect, uphold, and enforce any ethical concerns you may have to ensure that you remain in good standing with your license. The act of publishing this agreement to www.empoweringregistrants.org shall serve as Empowering Registrants’ legal signature to this document and we agree to be bound by it.

Content pending.