NCJ Number
138039
Date Published
1992
Length
219 pages
Annotation
Based in the belief that probation officers must have a broad knowledge of criminal justice processes, this textbook for British probation students and professionals discusses the usefulness and limitations of criminal statistics, fear of crime, crime victims, crime prevention, female offenders, the criminal justice processing of racial minorities, the presentence report, and the supervision of juveniles in the community.
Abstract
The discussion of crime statistics addresses the process by which official crime statistics are compiled, the gap between crimes committed and those reported and recorded, and the degree to which this gap undermines the usefulness of crime statistics. Fear of crime is discussed so probation officers may be sensitive to the fears of people they meet and develop skills to respond to those fears, many of which will often impact the probationers they supervise. Victim services are discussed as a means of preparing probation officers to serve the ends of victim reparation through restitution efforts by probationers. A chapter considers how the probation service may serve the ends of situational crime prevention, which involves the reduction or elimination of the opportunity to commit specific crimes. A chapter on female offenders discusses recent changes in the nature and extent of women's criminality, whether courts treat women offenders differently from men, and women as crime victims. A chapter that analyzes the processing of blacks in the British criminal justice system concludes that available evidence does not show that either sentencing or probation in isolation provides a plausible explanation for the high representation of ethnic minorities in the prison system. There is no indication that blacks are imprisoned for trivial misconduct. There is a question, however, regarding police targeting of black communities for a heavy law enforcement presence, which means that police priorities tend to produce a disproportionate percentage of arrests of blacks. Other chapters examine sentencing practice and the social inquiry report, and the supervision of juveniles in the community. Chapter notes, a 462-item bibliography, and name and subject indexes