'National Purpose and Objectives': A Comment
| Author | Peter Raynor |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058403100202 |
| Date | 01 June 1984 |
| Published date | 01 June 1984 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
’National Purpose and
Objectives’: A Comment
Peter Raynor
University College of Swansea
The Home Office’s attempt to state the role of the Service in the
Criminal Justice System begs many questions about the
directions for improvement of that system. The author suggests a
rationale for Criminal Justice, and a consequent role for the
Service which is relevant to community needs.
The recent Home
Office draft discussion paper
with resistant clients who were not ’mature’
on national Purpose and ObjectiVes’l represents
enough to recognise their own ’real’ needs. This
a new
departure m
many ways. Even the attempt
rationale for probation is most fully elaborated m
to state consistent and comprehensive national
the work of Foren and Bailey2, for many years a
objectives for a locally organised Service is
central text m
probation trammg, and although
something of an innovation, and suggests a closer
Bottoms and McWilliams’ may exaggerate the
Home
Office mvolvement m
future m
the detailed
extent to which this became a generally applied
planning of local Service activity. This must have
model of practice, ideas of this kmd certainly seem
implications for the role ol Chief Probation
to have underpinned most authoritative statements
Officers and their Committees, and for the
about the role of probation m
the criminal justice
traditional relationship between them. Such
system. For instance, Radzinowicz described
changes may, in some areas, be accepted with less
probation as ’the most significant contribution
than wholehearted enthusiasm. The most
to the new
..
penological theory and practice .
interesting aspect of the paper, however, lies not
a form of social service preventing further cnme
in its organizational implications (to which some
through a readjustment of the culprit&dquo;
pragmatic accommodation will doubtless be
found) but m its attempt to restate the role and
function of the Service
Many officers got on with the job,
m
the context of the cnrrunal
sustained by a stubbornly individualistic
justice system as a whole rather than m
relation to
the needs of individual offenders
perspective, or by a social workers’ faith
in ’feelings’, or by a commonsense
conviction that the
The Historical Background
job was worth doing
and research irrelevant.
The significance of this shift is best illustrated
by considering the recent history of the Service and
particularly the history of ideas within it Here the
By the early nineteen-seventies the picture was
most
obvious recent change has been widespread
not so clear The new
juvenile justice legislation
questioning of the desirability and feasability of a
of 1969 was beginning to show the problems of
central emphasis on the ’treatment’ of offenders
implementation which have dogged it ever since,
The Service of the nineteen-sixties shared in the
new developments in the sociology of deviance
general enthusiasm for ’welfare’ models and a
were questiomng the simple identification of
belief m ’rehabilitation through carework’:
delinquency with pathology, and, perhaps most
offenders were to be made into non-offenders by
seriously, the attempt to reduce recidivism through
social carework, and the coercive framework of
social casework appeared to be failmg one
’treatment’ within a crimmal justice system was
empirical test after another The Home Office’s
justified as a device for ensunng therapeutic contact
own probation research programme produced
43
some
of the most discouragmg results, culminating
prescriptions for the future objectives of the
m
the IMPACT
study which seemed to show that
Service. These have ranged from the idea that it
offenders who
received larger doses of social work
should retreat from its claims to cure offenders, and
were more likely to get worse than betters
its role m
the criminal justice system, to offer a
Meanwhile the Probation Service grew and the use
strictly voluntary service (e.g. Harris’), to the
of the probation order on the whole dechned. How
proposal that it should become the vehicle for a
should the Service react to this new state of affairs?
range of explicit semi-custodial pumshments m
Many officers very reasonably ignored it and got
which helpmg offenders need not be a...
To continue reading
Request your trial