Editorial
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455050104800401 |
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
246
EDITORIAL
Anyone with lingering doubts about the extent to which probation training has been
transformed in recent years will find the range of personal accounts presented in Entering
Probation During the 1950s and 1960s to be highly instructive. This collection contains
some extraordinary memories – for example, one author recalls how, in the course of gaining
‘relevant experience’ for probation work, she was sent alone to remove a child from
prospective adopters because of concerns about their standard of care; they had no prior
warning of her visit. All of these papers are offered in a minimally edited, ‘raw’format, and
are intriguing for what they leave out as much as for what they include. The informality of
the prospective probation officer’s career path fifty years ago is certainly unrecognisable
from the highly structured evaluative processes that characterise modern probation training.
‘An Integrated Training?’in the Letters section also illustrates this point very well.
Continuing the historical theme, Frederic Rainer: The Founder of Probation? discusses
the life of the man who may have sparked the Probation Service into existence. Almost
incidentally, this paper quotes a passage from a report written in 1926, which praises the fact
that over the preceding thirty years the prison population had been cut by two-thirds (to
11,000) and the number of prisons halved (to 32). Different times indeed, with the current
prison population nearing 70,000 people held in around 150 establishments.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Probation in Romania: The Challenge of Change is
that the dilemmas facing this new-born probation service, bear such a resemblance to those
which vex commentators on probation in the relatively ancient UK services. Astrong tension
is already evident between the controlling and caring, rehabilitative functions of probation;
this has developed in a socio-political context characterised by poverty and cultural
uncertainty during the transition from Communist rule. In fact the Romanian Probation
Service appears to have undergone a process of accelerated growth which, in a little more
than five years, has resulted in the kind of fully formed crisis of service identity which took
at least 75 years to emerge in the UK.
“Creative Solutions” to Women’s Offendingrecounts the authors’attempts to engage with
the modern dilemma of supplying convincing evidence in a context where recognised
measures of effectiveness have become so prescribed. In a careful, considered paper, they
present encouraging results relating not only to the ‘gold standard’of reconviction rates, but
also to a range of other, professionally significant, if politically neglected, measures of
effectiveness.
Two articles in this edition focus on work involving victims: Good Practice with
Perpetrators of Domestic Violence discusses a national survey of perpetrator programmes,
concluding that the opinions and safety of survivors are still not as central as they ought to
be. The Reflections piece The Victim in the Pre-sentence Report argues that questionable
and potentially illegal practice has arisen from probation officers’ concerns about meeting
rigid performance criteria suggested by the Probation Inspectorate.
Finally, a reminder about the next Special Issue, Prisons, Prisoners and Resettlement, due
to be published in 2002. This extended edition will address a wide range of issues, such as
suicide, human rights and women prisoners. The deadline is 1 February 2002 and
contributions are still welcome, as is any correspondence relating to the contents of this or
any other issue of the Probation Journal.
Editorial p246 22/11/01 9:06 am Page 1
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