David Mathieson

The Probation Service and Sentencing

THE probation officer is no longer a person who simply works with clients under his supervision. The probation officer now plays an increasing part in the process of sentencing offenders in court. Research has shown that eighty per cent of probation officers’ recommendations in social inquiry reports are accepted by the courts.’ Juvenile courts have been obliged by statute since 19332 to consider reports from the Probation Service (or Local Authority) and the Secretary of State has recommended3 that, as a normal practice, all courts should consider a social inquiry report on an offender aged 17 or over before passing certain custodial sentences. Courts

Book Review: Juvenile Justice Reform and Restorative Justice: Building Theory and Policy from Practice

This new book from Florida Atlantic University seeks to promote restorative justice, and combines a passionate belief on the part of the authors with a rigorous analysis of research evidence. Readers will readily identify with a clever piece of understatement by the authors in the introduction. Referring to challenges being faced in the USA, they describe a juvenile justice system ‘whose transformation in the past decade has followed a direction that must seem less than inviting to restorative justice policy and practice’. Contrasting the restorative vision with an increasingly adversarial and bureaucratic system of justice helpfully and accurately sets the scene. The authors remind us that restorative justice is not new – and they accept as a general description of restorative justice ‘every action that is primarily oriented towards doing justice by repairing the harm that has been caused by a crime’. Wide arrays of restorative practices have emerged illustrated by a comprehensive table. There are limitations on the role of criminal and juvenile justice systems in responding to crime. Communities therefore have an essential part to play because:

Deadline date for Letters in the September Issue is August 1st. Superficial Analysis

Superficial Analysis Ian Hankinson and David Stephens write about the increase in bureaucracy in the Probation Service (PJ March 1986) 1 do not quarrel with that general view. Their article, however, was a disappointing and superficial analysis of the causes of that increase in bureaucracy. They blamed management entirely and totally exonerated the maingrade. The issue of bureaucracy in the Probation Service merits amuch more serious and much less partial article. What is bureaucracy in the context 0ftheProbation Service? What are its advantages as well as dis~ivant~,~es? ~hatpart da maingrade staff and the tradeumons play in increasing bureaucratic procedures? How can bureaucracy be harnessed and monitored?

Book Reviews : Prison Service Journal, July 1978

trainees, hostel residents and in various fieldwork settings. In compiling this book they have also responded to feedback from probation officers and other social workers who have sought their own fields of application following involvement in the team’s staff training courses. The specific training techniqueswhich include questionnaires, check lists, sentence-completion exercises, group discussion methods, interviews, games, observation, role-play, simulations, critical incident analysis and successive approximation to desired behaviour-are organised into a fourstage problem solving process; selfassessment, setting objectives, learning and evaluation.

Book Reviews : A Non-Treatment Paradigm for Probation Practice: A. E. Bottoms and William McWilliams British Journal of Social Work, Summer 1979

monitoring arising from organisational needs (rather than from the needs of individual workers) and providing guidelines for work when the Service and its methods are under attack. McWilliam’s goes on to offer a system based on decision analysis monitoring which is dependant on a four stage process of: identifying goals, recognising relevant factors, recognising choices, recording outcomes and feedback of outcome. This is similar to management by objectives at present taught in schools of management. The proper use of information is the life blood of a professional organisation and that should be given high priority in the methodology of management. The paper by Laurence Moseley convinces with its clarity that

Book Reviews : Social Work and the Courts Edited by Howard Parker Edward Arnold, £4.54

a chance, officers were more sensitive to failure to respond. Officers taking breach action generally were male, experienced and older than the base group of remaining officers, with senior probation officers being over-represented. Speculation about these differences appear to suggest lack of experience, uncertainty and tendency to idealism were important factors in holding officers back from breach action. Important differences between area officers were noted, indicating that the controlling aspect of probation was not a uniform experience for clients on probation. The overall conclusion from the study is that we undertake sanctions

Review Article : The Probation Service and Volunteers

It also provides informal social control. Why do most people obey most of the laws for most of the time? Not, such evidence as there is suggests, primarily because they respect or fear the law of the land or the formal agencies for enforcing it (the police, the courts, the probation service and the rest), but because they care what their families, friends, neighbours and workmates will think-and perhaps do.3 The strength and quality of this informal social control depends on the outlook, attitudes and behaviour of the family and the neighbourhood, and the extent to which they are canalized into effective action. If family and neighbourhood seem tolerant of, or acquiescent in, crime, the informal social controls will be weak and the formal agencies will have too much to do-as is increasingly the case at present. Helping to mobilize community values into community action (in actively discouraging crime and in providing interesting and constructive alternative activities for the young) seem a surer and better way of crime control than the strengthening of police, courts and prisons.

Book Reviews : A Sense of Freedom Jimmy Boyle Pan, 80p Angel Face—The Making of a Criminal Walter Probyn George Allen and Unwin, £4.95

This is a short pamphlet, and as such is difficult to review. If the reviewer says too little, he does not fulfil his brief; if he says too much, he is likely to deter the reader from perusing the pamphlet itself. This reviewer proposes to resolve the dilemma by disclosing what the report sets out to say, but not how it says it. There is, as the working party rightly says, nothing new in considering the element of risk in social work. But there has emerged a rather defensive attitude on the part of the Probation Service, which is regrettable and which could operate as a barrier to constructive thinking. Though the working party does not say so, the Service has also appeared, at least to some, to be surprisingly volatile, accepting with little demur the risks inherent in parole, but objecting to those implied by the Younger Report. It is certainly time that NAPO branches gave serious thought to this whole area. The document sets out to examine how a self protective attitude has

Conflict and Change in Probation

IT ~s become increasingly obvious over the past decade that the Probation and After-Care Service is undergoing a process of quite fundamental change. Analysis of change is one of the most popular and important activities in many spheres these days. The American sociologist, Alvin Tofl3er, in his book Future Shock (1970), graphically reminded us that we cannot avoid confrontation with change. There is an uncomfortable truth in some of Toffler’s words. &dquo;Change is avalanching upon our heads and most people are grotesquely unprepared to cope with it. What is occurring now is bigger, deeper and

Book Reviews : Social Work Noel Timms Routledge and Kegan Paul. £1 10s

to ’Maturity&dquo;) includes a short historical study of the development of the idea of prison, from which Menfyu Turner suggests we have made little progress in fundamenta’ls (despite improvements in detail) during the last 130 years. He thinks we should ’now abandon old ideas, develop more community care for minor offenders, and introduce only two sentenches for the rest. The inadequate offenders should be sentenced to &dquo;simple imprisonment&dquo; for five yeass, with possible conditional release alter one year, and the aggressive offender to &dquo;preventive custody&dquo; ,for ten years, with possible release aifter three years. Treatment &dquo;