NCJ Number
158999
Date Published
1995
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines variations in probation functions among 11 countries.
Abstract
The countries included in the study are Australia (New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia), Canada, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Sweden, Scotland, and England and Wales. All the probation systems included by definition some form of probation supervision, either as a substitute for a court sentence or as a sentence in its own right. Most performed a wide range of additional functions. All systems, with the exception of Japan and the Philippines, provided the courts with some form of pretrial report on offenders. Nine of the systems did some work with prisoners in the form of either prerelease assessment or preparing offenders for release. All systems supervise offenders after their release from prison, with the exception of Canada, where this work is done by a separate Parole Service. One figure shows the proportion of time given to various tasks in each system, except for Hungary and Israel, for which no data were available. One section of the chapter focuses on the key dimensions on which the systems varied in the way they conduct probation supervision. Dimensions examined are from therapy to punishment, whether probation officers are bureaucrats or professionals, and their use of community resources. The final section of the chapter considers role conflict between the control and care functions of probation. England and Wales have a particular problem in this area, where many probation officers perceive that the policies of the Home Office are intended to replace officers' social work functions with more controlling and punitive supervision. 1 figure and 1 table