Probation and the Reconfiguration of Crime Control
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Description
Over the course of the last two decades, and at an accelerating pace over the last five years, the field of crime control and criminal justice has been reconfigured in important ways. The probation service is deeply implicated in that transformation, though its relation to the process has been problematic. The service gives the impression of being caught up in a current that is sweeping it away from its bearings, and is caught between trying to resist and trying to swim with the tide. This is a strange position for the service to find itself in. After half a century of being in the vanguard of progressive change, the probation service now appears as a conservative force, straining to hold on to a framework that is fast disappearing. Such is the strength of the current, however, that probation has not been able to hold out against it. Probation work, and the self-identity of probation staff, have probably changed more in the last 10 or 15 years than over the previous half century. If a practising probation officer from the 1970s were to be transported in a time capsule to the present day, without experiencing the intervening years, he or she would find the language and the ‘mission’ of the Chief Officers of Probation, or the Probation Inspectorate to be quite alien (and quite probably unintelligible).
Source Publication
The Probation Service: Responding to Change
Source Editors/Authors
Ros Burnett
Publication Date
1997
Recommended Citation
Garland, David W., "Probation and the Reconfiguration of Crime Control" (1997). Faculty Chapters. 694.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/694
