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Some aspects of the new functions which we envisage, such as the assessment of
individual offenders and their allocation to appropriate tasks would not be very
remote fromexistingprobation duties (Ibid.:para 49).
The assumption of the administration of community service schemes by the Probation
Service marked a significant departure in the practices and world viewof the service, which
in retrospect is recognised as a primaryforce in moving the Probation Service into the area
of corrections and away from their traditionally perceived role of social worker and needs
provider (Nellis 2004:120). Albeit, the role that rehabilitation had to play in the aims of
sentencing was to come under increasing criticism during the same period that community
service was introduced in England and Wales (Martinson 1974), the adoption of the
function of penal agent by the Probation Service in administering community service
schemes did present challenges to the Probation Services particularly for the main grade
probation officers with daily case loads. During the settling in period, the Service was
forced to “walk a tight rope” by not precipitously rejecting the supervisory function of
community service as anathema to the social worker’s role (Winfield1977). Furthermore,
the arrival of community service as an intermediate sentence unsettled the readilyaccepted
array of sentencing aims, with just deserts, depending upon the seriousness of the offence,
attracting the use of imprisonment at the top end of the scale and rehabilitation attracting
the use of probation at the lower endof the scale. 17
Such changes in the role of the Probation Service are best identified in the day to day
operation of the communityservice schemes. Initially, the probation officer is engaged to
provide a Social Enquiry Report on an offender. The recommendation of community
service in such a report by the probation officer invests the probation officer with
significant control over the offender. Probation officers who work closelywith their local
17 The rehabilitative effect of aprison sentence was seen to be “not working” (Home Office 1970) especiallywhen prisoners were accommodatedin overcrowdedprisons.
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