ABSTRACT
Almost two-thirds of the orders were converted to conditional discharges. The remaining thirty-six fell into roughly two groups: in the first either the probation officer or the magistrate decided to carry on the order for the full year, mainly because the probationer’s delinquent behaviour or other social circumstances gave cause for concern. The second group consisted of those who either committed further offences and received custodial sentences or who disappeared. On the other hand, none of them identified inter-personal conflict as the main focus of difficulty, while the problem area was the focus of task-centred work in seven of the short-term cases. (Since these problems usually centred on marital conflict, this difference is probably associated with the fact that far more of the short-term probationers lived in a permanent marital or cohabiting relationship). In addition to completing interview schedules, the probation officers continued to write narrative accounts of their interviews with clients and usually two-monthly summaries.
