NCJ Number
159001
Date Published
1995
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines key points from data of a study of probation in 11 countries and offers preliminary comparative observations.
Abstract
The countries involved in the study were Australia (New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia), Canada, Sweden, Japan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, England and Wales, Scotland, Hungary, and Israel. An examination of some of the characteristics of probation in the case study countries addresses the probation order, organization and structure, and functions. The author notes that the case-study countries manifest probation systems that are at different points on a multiplex of continua. One continuum (professionalization) places the economically stretched and nascent Hungarian and Papua New Guinea services at one extreme and the highly professionalized orientation of Israel at the other extreme. Another scale, between treatment and control, places Israel again at one extreme but the former common-law countries of Australia, Canada, and increasingly England and Wales at the other. In terms of size, the services vary between the massive English and Welsh service and the Papua New Guinea or Hungarian systems. In terms of community involvement, Japan, Sweden, and Papua New Guinea have an excess of volunteers over probation officers; Israel, on the other hand, makes no significant use of volunteers. England and Wales have no central available information on the number of volunteers. Discernible changes in probation around the world include a greater emphasis on accountability, firmness of resolve, and clarity of purpose. Probation today is often not a single sentence but a framework for community corrections, containing the possibility of combinations of sentence, graduated according to the gravity of the crime or the circumstances of the criminal. 3 notes