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agent and enforcement officer will advance and the role of the social worker will recede
(Nellis 2004:14).
Indeed in Halton’s study of change in the Irish Probation Service (2007) which was
conducted just before the statutory suspended sentence was introduced, her probation
officer respondents universallyidentified the shift awayfrom the traditional social worker’s
perspective towards that of controllingagent in the criminal justice system. 173
One of her respondents conciselystated:
“Increasingly, our role is that of containment, this conflicts with the caring/ supportive
side of our job”PWO12.
While another reflected upon the difficulties of balancing organizational, professional and
ideological challenges thus:
“I would saythat our employers have no interest in the welfare perspective, or little
interest. We now“assist in public safety”. Everything we do is measured against
controllingthe offender andlimiting the misbehaviour, so that the communityis safer.
The measurements are clear measurements of crime reduction… I think that the
language at anyrate at the moment is a language of “control” rather than a language
of “encouragement” or “engagement”, not to mention “counselling”
(Spwoy-Halton 2007:186).
Such concerns expressed above by Irish Probation Officers will be magnified by the
induction of the probation service into the supervisoryfunction of the suspended sentence
under Section 99(4).
173 The studypoints to a significant measure of professional orientation where 47% of participants located“care” as their first priorityof practice andnot one probation officer indicated
“control” as afirst priorityin practice.
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