NCJ Number
106446
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 26 Issue: 2 Dated: (May 1987) Pages: 97-121
Date Published
1987
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This paper considers the position of and justification for the English probation system in the modern period, in which penal policy has become dominated by pragmatism.
Abstract
It plots the effects on the service of the demise of confidence in the diagnostic ideal and the subsequent dominance of policy considerations. Three schools of thought in the probation service are identified: the managerial school, the radical school, and the personalist school. The managerial school views the offender as a unit to be processed within a framework of policy. This school emphasizes management control over professional conduct of probation officers and casework supervision as a function of control in pursuit of policy objectives. The radical school, openly Marxist, protests the social control of probation officers. This school wants collective solutions and a reorganization of society, but it resembles the managerial school in considering the individual a unit within a definite system. The personalist school believes that all probationers should be treated as ends in themselves. Each school is pragmatic, each sees the offender as bounded by a framework of policy, and each school believes that the service should provide alternatives to custody but for different reasons. 3 tables, 14 notes, and about 60 references.