Probation Revisited
| Author | Mark Monger |
| Published date | 01 September 1976 |
| Date | 01 September 1976 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455057602300307 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
and for myself, has needed a spiritual dimension in which relationships
are referred to prayer, that silent, unintrusive, sharing of guilt, forgive-
ness and strength. It is, perhaps, the only undefiled therapeutic relation-
ship which offers remedies for our sins, time for amendment of life, and
the purpose and peace with which to fulfil it.
REFERENCES
1. Schur, E. Radical Non-Intervention, Prentice Hall Int., 1973.
2. McConville, S. The Use of Imprisonment, RKP, 1976.
3. Ellul, J. Hope in time of abandonment, Seabury, 1973.
4. NSPCC. At Risk, RKP, 1976.
5. Haslam, M. Psychiatric Illness in Adolescence, Buttenvorths, 1975.
6. NACRO. Residential Care, 1975.
7. NACRO. Hostels and After-care Hostels, 1970.
8. Timms, N. The Client Speaks, RKP, 1970.
9. Jennings, S. Creative Therapy, Pitman, 1975.
10. Herts. Probation Service. Volunteers, 1975.
11. Tutt, N. Care or Custody, Darton, Longman, Tod, 1974.
*Counsellng News: NCSS, 26 Bedford Square. WCI.
Probation Revisited
MARK MONGER
Leicester University
I was pleased to accept the invitation to write this article, but there are
pitfalls. There could be a temptation to pontificate out of a very short
and limited experience. I worked in a small office at Wigston, a suburb
of Leicester, newly decentralised, and covering a mixed urban and rural
area and including one rural court, to which I chose to be attached for
court duty and social enquiry purposes. The office staff is young: a
Senior Probation Officer in his thirties and four probation officers; two
of whom are in their third year of service and the other two in their
first and three of whom are graduates from our University School of
Social Work. Not far away is another small office with a much older
staff none of whom are ex the School and I could imagine my impres-
sions of probation to have been rather different had I been placed there.
Altogether, I make no claim to be able to state how things are, only how
they appear to me from the particular perspective I obtained.’
How much have things changed in the last decade or so(?) is I suppose
the question I am really being asked. I shall be suggesting in this article
that environmentally they have changed a good deal; in some essentials,
not as much as I had expected.
We may as well begin with the Home Office. The last ten years have
seen a reappraisal by the Inspectorate of its role, bringing considerable
functional changes. When I came in to the Service in the very late
forties, the Inspectorate was closely related to the Deity. We really did
think they knew more about the job than we did and we had a fairly
80
reverential view of them. There were some remarkable characters
around, which helped; I wonder how many lady inspectors smoke pipes
these days?
I suppose it was inevitable that the personal interest Inspectors took in
the individual entrant should give way to something more sophisticated
and, if I get it right, more amorphous than the pattern I knew. We were
inspected after three months and ten months, with a view to &dquo;confirma-
tion&dquo; at the end of a first year. My earliest experiences in Salford were
the classic...
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