ABSTRACT
This book captures and illustrates significant if not seismic changes to the Probation Service in recent years. At the turn of 2003–4 the Carter Report and the Home Office response to Carter was published (Carter Report 2003; Home Office 2004). The former proposed and the latter accepted that there should be fundamental changes in the way probation services are organised and delivered. Indeed, at that stage it seemed doubtful that there would continue to be something called a Probation Service. Since then there have been numerous discussions about the future direction of probation practice; those working within the Service have had to face a good deal of uncertainty, especially since the architects of the new organisational structure – the National Offender Management Service with concomitant Regional Offender Managers – left a good deal unsaid about future operations. But the publication of this book could not have been more timely since it coincides with the centenary anniversary of the founding of the Probation Service in the Probation of Offenders Act 1907. Moreover, the contributors to the book not only illustrate and take account of recent developments but get to the heart of the issues which make ‘probation’ such a controversial and captivating topic within the panoply of modern-day forms of social regulation and punishment.
