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The growth of formal police‐probation partnerships in the USA has been accompanied by an increased awareness of the potential threats of mission distortion. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of mission distribution

The paper is based on interviews with police and community corrections officers involved in an active partnership in Spokane, Washington. The paper emphasizes the abuse of authority, stalking horse incidents, and the scope of legitimate police and probation authority.

Ultimately, mission distortion has the potential to undermine the credibility of police‐probation partnerships.

The paper offers training and policy recommendations for police and community corrections administrators.

Little is known about effective supervision of offenders with debt. This multiple case study aims to gain insight into working elements in offender supervision on debt. This is important for probation officers to choose the most effective interventions in daily offender supervision.

This study included five best practice cases based on both interviews with involved professionals and clients and client file information. One case was described in detail to illustrate what probation officers and clients encounter when working on debt. All five cases were analyzed thematically using pattern matching techniques and crosscase syntheses on debt background, current supervision, barriers and working elements.

Organization processes and lack of aftercare hinder effective supervision. Close collaboration with other professionals (e.g. debt counselors) is important in supervising clients with debt. The client’s own behavior and motivation for supervision are crucial in the success of debt supervision and can be both hindering and effective. Working elements in supervision depend on personal characteristics of professionals involved and on the extent to which elements of a working alliance, particularly trust and bonding, are built.

Support and facilitation from probation organizations regarding primary conditions and collaboration, training professionals in methods of stimulating clients motivation and an effective working alliance are essential to supervise clients with debt adequately.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other in-depth study has yet been conducted on working elements in supervision of probationers with debt.

The present account results from twelve months of the authors' involvement with a probation service undergoing change. The change was initiated by an external body to the service and was based upon an apparently plausible rationale. Nevertheless considerable difficulties arose in the implementation of the change and these have provided some specific insights into the functioning of the organisation, and the values, attitudes and beliefs of some of its key decision‐makers. The data have also formed the basis of an action research programme (which is currently underway) and have generated substantive material from which to draw conclusions concerning the salient factors affecting the change. We believe that these conclusions, which form the core of this article, have particular implications for the management of change in professional settings, such as research and development, schools and further education establishments. These settings, like a probation service, are characteristically client centred, where the professionals ‘… are trained on the outside, usually at the public expense, and a large number of rules are inculcated into them. They bring these into the organization and are expected to act upon them without further reference to their skills’. Furthermore we consider that the essence of our findings has important implications for any organisation where internal or external change agents are attempting to bring about change.

This presentation describes the successful application of computerized information technology, known as a Decision Support System (DSS), to making decisions regarding dispositions by Youth Probation Officers in the Jerusalem Probation Service. It concentrates on the specific characteristics of DSS that make it especially applicable for improving clinical decisions, and on the strategies involved in designing, developing and installing the system so that it suits the working routine of the Probation Service. The description of how the DSS works in our case is followed by an analysis of results, i.e., of the consequences of the system's installation in terms of changes in performance of the decision task by professionals and the changes that this causes on the organizational level. Finally, we shall attempt to use our experience to derive some general guidelines for designing and implementing similar decision aids in other human service organizations.

The current study examines the prevalence, perceived effectiveness, and potential antecedents (e.g. departmental culture) of law enforcement agencies in collaborating with probation and parole agencies. Specifically, the study reveals how the leaders (i.e. police chief, sheriff) in law enforcement view police-community corrections partnerships.

Data were collected from a state-wide survey of all sheriffs’ offices and a random sample of municipal police departments in Texas.

Findings indicated information sharing and specialized enforcement partnerships were the most common partnership types, partnerships were more common with adult and juvenile probation than with adult parole, and partnerships remain predominantly informal. Finally, police chiefs/sheriffs in the departments with a culture supportive of offender reentry were more likely to support and engage in partnerships with adult/juvenile probation and adult parole agencies.

Even without formal programs, it seems that police-probation/parole partnerships are, in one form or another, practically inevitable. The positive evaluation of law enforcement personnel leaves room for hope for expansions of such partnerships in the future.

The Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 extended post-release supervision to individuals serving short prison sentences while introducing an extended array of actors into the resettlement field. This paper aims to explore the barriers that prison practitioners and community probation workers faced in their attempts to provide resettlement support, and how in response to these barriers, these practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies.

This empirical research features the perspectives of 19 prison, probation and third-sector actors within a case-study area in England. Qualitative interviews were carried out, alongside observations and field notes of daily practice.

Findings indicate that despite the promise of additional support, practitioners face significant barriers inhibiting their ability to provide effective resettlement assistance. The three specific barriers identified are institutional, temporal and political-economic. In response, practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies, shifting blame vertically down to service users and horizontally towards the other actors involved in managing these individuals.

This article concludes with a brief overview of the latest iteration of resettlement practice, before exploring how a desistance-focused approach by practitioners may improve resettlement outcomes.

These findings help to expand our understanding of the responsibilisation literature, particularly how responsibilisation operates at a practitioner level, and how barriers become refracted and reframed into responsibilisation strategies. This article also draws on the “mass supervision” literature to demonstrate how the introduction of multiple agencies obfuscates individual responsibility for resettlement and large caseloads erode supervisory practice.

As early as 1959 the Crowther Report pinpointed the last year of compulsory education as the heaviest year for juvenile delinquency. It is therefore, a curious paradox, that little, if any, liaison exists between probation officers and school careers masters.

The role of the Probation Service in providing an information and assessment process to the courts is currently in a state of considerable flux. This paper, in reviewing the developments in Pre‐Sentence Report (PSR) writing by the Probation Service, suggests that for a number of reasons reports have become potentially contentious.

People with learning disabilities have a number of vulnerabilities which makes the process of probation difficult for them to cope with without further support. This paper looks at ways to improve this support and demonstrates ways in which services can be developed to meet clients' needs.