ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to capture the spirit of probation theory immediately before and during World War I (WWI). It first explores the opportunity for pre-trial divergence that war offered to sentencers from the eighteenth century onwards. The chapter then considers whether military service can be said to encourage offenders to cease their criminal career. It also discusses the theories of one influential probation officer, Robert Holmes, and other contemporary theorists writing around the WWI period. The chapter examines their theories of re-moralisation, and focuses on the experiences of those boys who had been held by institutions of reform and punishment, and then entered into military service, in order to reveal what happened to some of the boys that Holmes arranged for the armed forces to recruit during WWI. It was these young boys who bore the hopes of probation officers as well as the expectations of a public who called on them to serve their country.
