ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to explore key themes concerning the relationships between sentencing and probation or social work reports provided to assist sentencing. The chapter draws on some of the available British and North American literature and research, as well as on professional experience of'assisting sentencing' by providing social enquiry reports (SERs) to the Scottish courts. 1 Court reports are of interest for a variety of reasons. They represent an important and interesting point of exchange between professional groups with different responsibilities, purposes and perspectives. Implicitly, they conjoin attention to issues of social justice and criminal justice, of substantive justice and formal justice, and of rights and risks. In addition, court reports constitute an interface between public administration and criminal justice. As such, they merge concerns around bureaucratic justice in public administration with issues around discretionary justice in sentencing. These exchanges and interfaces offer rich fields of enquiry which are of profound value and importance in terms of contemporary socio-legal and penological theory.
