The fundamental values of an adult and juvenile probation officer include community protection, accountability, facilitation of rehabilitation, and mutual respect. The primary value of probation officers is to supervise their charges and ensure that they are meeting the terms of probation. Supervision of the clients is a key way of keeping the community protected. The next value is accountability, holding the offender accountable for any digression from their Court-ordered supervision.
The monitoring of accountability is a critical component of what probation officers are expected to do. After this is rehabilitation, helping released offenders re-entering into society. This can mean helping offenders find a job or a home to giving them advice on handling social situations. Last is mutual respect because probation officers should show respect in regards of receiving respect. With all these values it gives a probation officer quite a few goals: providing the greatest chance of success for clients and exercising authority with good judgment and equality.
Probation Officers might like their job because it is an interesting and challenging career that is different everyday. They also have the opportunity to make a positive impact on people and help them change the behavior that got them involved in the legal system. The values of a probation officer allows them to interact with their clients with sensitivity, respect, and in a non-judgmental manner so they can develop and keep mutual relationships. This gives the parolee a better chance of changing and not ending up back in jail.
Some issues as a probation officer include danger, travel and stress. Since they are working with criminals, it can put them in dangerous situations. Probation officers often have to visit the homes and work places of their clients they are monitoring. This puts them in a vulnerable position when they are walking inside the homes or places of employment of former criminals.
While some of the job does require you to sit behind a desk, majority of the time probation officers are driving around in the ield, visiting former offenders, conducting home site visits for those convicts that are just returning home and checking that the former criminals are working where and when they say they are working. This job involves a high risk of stress due to all their responsibility and danger they are around everyday. Two of the main reasons I want to be a probation officer is for the goodness of trying to help someone change their paths and also let them know it is never to late to turn your life around.
