Home      Login

Abstract: 

In a great many jurisdictions in Europe and around the world, recent decades have seen very significant developments in relation to offender supervision in the community. Probation institutions, that is, those institutions responsible for implementing all sorts of community sanctions and measures (CSMs) during the criminal justice process, have grown remarkably both in scale and geographical reach. The forms of supervision that they deliver have also intensified so those subject to probation may now face a range of different and more onerous conditions. This rapid expansion of offender supervision (and its changing forms) has been remarkably under-researched, although recent efforts have begun to redress this neglect. This article addresses three myths about CSMs, suggests that merely expanding the use of probation is not the answer to reducing recidivism, and calls for a more critical and measured sort of advocacy for probation, one that recognizes its potential costs and harms as well as its benefits. The question becomes less whether probation is a useful and constructive institution of justice and more under what conditions probation is a useful and constructive institution of justice.

Keywords: Probation, parole, community corrections, offender supervision, community sanctions and measures (CSMS)

Affiliations:  1: University of Glasgow.