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“I simplyassess the guyand see if he is suitable or not”; “(I make) an honest assessment of
people’s ability to do community service. I need to be able to stand over it in Court”.
Others saw their role more in terms of a mission to assist in the rehabilitation of the
offender: “I am a social worker so I try to make a connection vis-à-vis a fairly dynamic
report to the Court”; “I see it as somewhat broader than just community service. I try to
look at the addiction issues”; “I give a picture to the Court of who the client is. I often
point out the terrible disadvantages these people have faced in life”; “I let the client know
of this great opportunityto stayout of prison” (Walsh andSexton 1999:75).
The Probation Service was identified in the White Paper as the agency which would
manage and execute the community service scheme. The imposition of such a function
upon the Probation Service could be viewed, as noted previously, as an attempt to graft
onto the everyday practices and cognitions of probation officers a task which was
essentiallypunitive in nature (Halton 2007:192). Previouslythe orientation of the Probation
Service was informed by a more humanistic and interventionist approach towards their
clients. In her study of change in probation practice in Ireland Halton quotes one of her
interviewees on this topic as follows:
“You do not engage with the person in community service, they’re doing their
work and you must certify to the court that they have done it or breach them if
they have not. I think this model has given the stakeholders-The Department of
Justice, and maybe the political system, the idea that probation might be a quick
and cheap fix. That’s it. I suppose there’s no political support in the country for
engaging with the person who’s doing damage in the community.” (Spwoy)
(Halton 2007:194)
This viewpoint, which was widely expressed in Halton’s study, presupposes that the
administration of the community service scheme by the Probation Service would be
imbued with the traditional probation ethos of caring, intervention and discretion. Instead
community service was to present a serious challenge to the Irish probation officers
worldviewwhich curtailed the discretion exercised bythem in the supervision of offenders
and limited the probation practices and modalities which were the norm for persons placed
on traditional probation (section 1(1)(b) Probation of Offenders Act 1907).
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