ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role played by social and personal contexts in mediating the outcome of the attempts to tackle obstacles successfully. Detailed analyses of officers’ and probationers’ accounts of how they tackled these obstacles are examined. In the case of officers, attention is focused upon two types of obstacles – drugs and the personal characteristics of the probationer – although these findings were replicated with regard to other obstacles. Some of the probationers reported instances when their officer had been able to help them directly with the obstacle which they had identified. Probationers’ battles against drug addiction have formed a recurring aspect of the analyses. The chapter examines the work of one officer-probationer pair. The purpose of investigating this case is to illustrate both the nature of the work undertaken as part of probation supervision and the role of other individual and social contexts in mediating such work.
