ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to build on existing work by exploring discourse about working with men in the occupational culture of the UK probation service. Bob Connell uses the terms hegemonic, marginalised and subordinated masculinity. Apart from an increasing awareness of the connection between masculinity and mental health, there has been less work in the adult community care field that has focused on the social construction of masculinity. The traditional discourse of masculinity is offender-centred in the sense that offenders’ explanatory accounts of their offences are usually accepted on face value. Men are seen as responsible for their actions in the sense that part of socially constructed masculinity is a desire to control, to get their own way. Accounts of practice in the interviews were most often within the new and mainstream discourses. The pre-sentence reports were written primarily within the traditional discourse of masculinity, with some evidence of the mainstream discourse but none of the new.
