The probation service changed since 1907 criminology essay

How has the main purpose of the Probation Service changed since 1907? The probation service was founded by the Probation of Offenders act in 1907, and England and Wales could celebrate a whole century with the probation service in 2007. What we today identify as the Probation Service have its origins from as early as the end of the 19th century with the Church of England Temperance Society who provided missionaries mainly working with petty criminals to slowly transfer into a modernized probation system. Now probation officers are working with more serious criminals who often suffer from mental health issues and drug addictions. Many new acts have occurred since 1907, unpaid work has been established and the methods of how punishment has been carried out have changed and the creation of new establishments. This essay will go through the most significant changes of the Probation Services’ purpose from its early start until present time and discover its most critical changes to reach its new goals and significant creations to conclude how the main purpose have changed since 1907. In 1876, a gift of give shillings was given from Frederic Rainer, a London printer, to the Church of England Temperance Society. This gift was given to then develop the creation of what became the Probation Service for England and Wales. Rainer’s expectation was that his money could be used to save the people who became criminalised by alcoholism even though the worst social threat at that point was typically petty crime. During that year, George Nelson was selected as the society’s first special missionary to Southwark Police Court, followed by William Batchelor being selected as the second missionary the year after to work in Bow Street and Mansion House Police courts. Their job was to deflect petty criminals from the overcrowded prisons when prisons were the punishment for first offenders that contained men, women and children. Probation was mainly based on Christianity in the early years, and Nelson and Batchelor were equipped with bibles visiting courts, factories and police stations. Their main issue were to work with thieves, travellers, alcoholics and prostitutes for convincing them to sign the pledge and let go of the alcohol. It was not until 1963 it was recommended to end the links with the Church of England and establish a state service through the Harris Committee report. In 1907, the Probation of Offenders Act turned voluntary development into a statutory concern, and the society had reached 124 missionaries and 19 mission women. It was the foundation of the modern probation service, and The Probation of Offenders Act presented a probation order, probation officers and qualified courts to release offenders on probation. The phrase ” advise, assist and befriend” was adopted and the Magistrates’ court were allowed to vary different probation conditions that gave them powers to convict and sentence for violations of the probation system. The establishment of Probation Rules were also created. During the next year out of 1, 043 courts, 763 of them now had a probation officer, where probation orders were made in 570 of them. People who got released on bail by the courts were the one who were probationers. The Mission supervised them as well as creating homes for boys, where the most famous was Padcroft in west London, including labour yards to arrange for training and employment. A considerable amount of the work was with juveniles together with a great amount of first-time offenders. Almost 20 years after the Probation of Offenders act, most of the staff was part-time workers. Through a departmental committee in 1922 followed by an Act in 1925, it was suggested to employ the staff as full-time officers with suitable training with a caseload suggested to 50-60. New regulations of environments and obligations managed to develop higher uniform standards and minor sessional spaces were converted to probation areas. In 1948, the Criminal justice act established a single probation order and the new standard demanded an inquiry report before sentencing. Juvenile work was declined in the 1960s and became balanced by an increase of offenders supervised on released from custody. The probation system obviously got impacted by the first and second world war among with all other public services. When the Blitz started in 1940, many of the children’s from the bigger cities and towns were transferred to the safer countryside (National Probation Directorate, 2007)The system stopped working with juvenile offenders in the 1960s which got balanced with a new growing amount of work with the offenders inside or leaving prison. In the 1970, community service (currently known as unpaid work) were introduced and turned out to be one of the biggest successes in the Probation Service. Unpaid work got established as a result of the Wootton Report and aimed to deprive offenders from leisure instead of liberty and believed the wisdom of reparation being a procedure of correcting crimes. Pilots started in Nottinghamshire and unpaid work was officially presented in the 1972 Criminal Justice Act. The Act also opened for bail hostels and day training centres. In the start it was only four day training centres that were located in London, Sheffield, Liverpool and Pontypridd. These day training centres targeted petty offenders to join a programme to progress their social and employment skills which they had to do for 60 days on a conditional order rather than being sent to prison. The attendance of 60 days became quite difficult as the level of employment kept increasing, which resulted in the days centres to eventually phase out by the 1991 Criminal Justice Act. The 1972 Act also launched a program of building so-called bail hostels in England and Wales. The programme was a part of government policy to provide considerable substitutes to custody and built over 100 hostels. Today the Probation Service runs more than 100 Home Office-approved buildings. They also have access to other places administrated by the voluntary sector. The 1972 Criminal justice act also enabled for the first time in the history sentences that was calculated in hours rather than months. Reporting to a community service unit was compulsory and they implemented mainly labor-intensive work including painting, decorating, gardening and graffiti cleaning to benefit the community. The skills the offender developed could be credited and the offender could accomplish to find employment. The work laid out by offenders have not changed much since its roots 40 years ago, but it have caught the public attention by some uncommon arrangements; working on renovating tanks at the Bovington in Dorset, helping refurbishing HMS Great Britain in Bristol which is a prominent international tourist attraction as well as working at the RSBP centre in Sandy, Bedfordshire. Drug treatments grew to be essential to the government’s agenda in the 1980’s as a result of the fear of Aids spreading to the heterosexual population through intravenous drug users. The Probation Service lead the way to the belief of getting offenders into treatment as a method of reducing offending. (National Probation Directorate, 2007)It was not until the 1990s the signs of the modern service came to light. The 1991 Criminal Justice Act introduced a combination of orders and the early release of prisoners on license. The Probation Service also feared that it would be joined with the Prison Service in the same century. This did not happen, but the two services became linked together in the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) which was established in 2004 and enabled a smoother method to rehabilitation for those who was moved from custody and back to the community. The Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 outlined statutory objectives for the service which included public protection. The National Probation Service (NPS) established in 2001 and adopted for the first time the phrase ” punishment, rehabilitation and public protection”. The modern work of the Probation system was gradually dominated by the concept of public protection, risk assessment and an ambition to determine what works to manage offenders in the best possible way. In the 21st century, the work of offenders has changed to work progressively more with dangerous and prolific offenders where a big amount of them have mental health problems which may also be combined with an addiction of drugs (National Probation Directorate, 2007). The National Probation System (NPS) were launched in April 2001. The present 54 probation committees became regulated into 42 new effective boards, and a National Probation Directive that established the Probation Boards’ Association (Teague, 2001). NPS were the result of three years of work introduced by the Government in 1998. It developed through a consultation process followed by a number of reports clarifying the goals of the probation system. The Government focused on methods to improve the effectiveness of probation and setting targets to reduce re-offending and provide larger protection for the society carried out by the ” what works” research. By March 2000, the government could finally state its purposes to create NPS and progress the new necessary legislation and processes, and the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 where the statutory beginning and it became responsible for the management of all of their offenders. The Probation Services’ new goals became public protection, reduce re-offending, proper punishment and rehabilitation (Evans, 2001). Only two years after its establishment, a Correctional Service Review suggested that the Probation Service and the Prison Service should be modernized into a new National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and Home Office affirmed full support of the review and indicated that NOMS should be presented within months. Proposals of a more rapidly cooperation between the two services could be tracked back to the report of Through the Prison Gate in 2001 and the Social Exclusion Unit’s report in 2002 describing how to reduce re-offending by ex-prisoners. As a result of these reports the development to make the two services more cooperative became influenced by the Halliday Report (2001) and the subsequent White Paper, Justice for All. The Home Office responded by stating that the restructuring of prison and probation activities was crucial, exclusively because of the new sentencing framework announced in the 2003 Criminal Justice Act and to make sure that the offenders did not end up in the middle of the services and also extended sentences for the public protection (Robinson and Burnett, 2007). In 2003, Patrick Carter was appointed to complete a review who mainly took place inside the government. His report ‘ Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A new approach’ was published in January 2004 and reflected two guiding lines; firstly to develop a breakthrough between the Prison and Probation Service, and secondly the introduction of greater contestability and the use of prison and probation through the public, private and voluntary sectors. Carter suggested the creation of NOMS and the government accepted his thoughts and ideas (Canton, 2011). NOMS were finally presented in June 2004, and 10 Regional Offender Managers (ROM) and a National Offender Manager (NOM) were rapidly selected and a National Offender Management Model (NOMM) was shaped to deliver the agenda for sentencing and involvements by all the organisations involved to manage the offenders (Robinson and Burnett, 2007). Modern work have become increasingly dominated by the concept of risk management, public protection, and to measure what works to manage offender. The creation of NOMS presented a more joined approach to the work of probation and prison (Cluely, 2012). NOMS and the NPS have modernised the service into a prepared evidence-based key to offending. The probation service is now better at managing risk offenders and reinsures the public protection. A relationship between the police and the probation service could not have been imagined the two previous decades, and the gaps between them have begun to come to a closure. (National Probation Directorate, 2007)The evolvement of the notion of managing offenders has also been followed by the Offenders Management Act 2007 (Cluely, 2012)Since 1907 the probation service has seen many changes. Since the Probation of Offenders Act 1907, statutory foundations have been created, and the probation service enabled the courts to hire probation officers replacing the missionaries. The missionaries many worked with petty or first time offending criminals. The modern probation system now works with prolific, more dangerous offenders where many of them suffer from mental health problems or drug addictions. The phrase ‘ advise, assist and befriend’ were frequently used and the establishment of Probation Rules could finally be created. Frequently changes were made from the 1960s, and the probation system declined working with juvenile offenders on the same basis as adults. One of the probation services’ biggest successes were presented in the 1972 Criminal Justice act which allowed for community service, currently known as unpaid work, as a result of the Wootton Report. This procedure was made to deprive offenders from leisure and hope of reparation to correct their crimes. The 1972 criminal justice act also enabled the offenders to serve their sentence in hours rather than months for the first time in the history. The modern probation service came about in the 1990s, and the 1991 Criminal Justice Act introduced a combination of orders together with early release on a license. The National Probation Service was established in 2001, and the phrase ” punishment, rehabilitation and public protection” became adopted. The modern probation system was gradually dominated by the concept of public protection, risk assessment and ‘ what works’ management to manage their offenders to rehabilitate their offenders in the best possible way. The Government generally focused on methods to improve the probation service, targeting re-offending and make sure of public protection, which also became the probation services’ new goals. The NPS were only established for two years until a Correctional Service Review suggested that the probation and prison service should be modernised into a National Offender Management Service. Patrick Carter’s ‘ Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A new approach’ was published in 2004, reflection two guiding lines approved by the government to finally establish NOMS in 2004. The overall main purpose of the Probation System may not seem to have changed significantly since its origins in 1907, but the probation service has showed a number of changes in procedures, mainly replacing the missionaries with probation officers and enable unpaid work. The phrase ‘ advise, assist and befriend’ have been replaced with ‘ punishment, rehabilitation and public protection’, and the modern probation systems’ work have become progressively become dominated by the concept of risk management, public protection, and to measure what works to manage offenders. NOMS presented a more joined approach between the prison and the probation service. The main purpose of the work of the modern probation service have changed from working with petty or first crime criminals, to now be focused on reductive purposes, crime reduction, public protection, to reform and rehabilitate offenders and reparation by offenders to the victim who were affected by their offence.