ABSTRACT
In describing the existing research into probation officer-black offender relations, it is necessary to distinguish research which refers to probation practice and work which has been concerned with related but wider issues.1 There is a growing literature on the sentencing of black people, which does not directly address social-work practice. Here, as with probation practice, a complex picture emerges, since a number of important studies seemed to indicate that there was little if any ‘racial’ discrimination at the sentencing stage of the criminal justice process (McConville and Baldwin 1982; Crowe and Cove 1984). Hudson, on the other hand, in a recent study of sentencing in London, found considerable disparity of sentencing for the most common offences like theft and burglary, commenting that:
The vulnerability of the unemployed to custody, of black people to high tariff, very interventionist sentencing in run of the mill cases, and custody for even minor offences against the person, accompanied by the low use of probation for black males, was entirely consistent between courts.
