Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1962-1963 — Page 20

CHAPTER V

PROBATION

49. The Probation Service forms one of the two main branches of the work of the Probation Section-the other being the operation of juvenile correctional and approved (probation) institutions. The work of probation officers does not lend itself to the spectacular; there are few new buildings to provide an outward and visible sign of develop- ment and those on probation lead a normal life in widely dispersed areas of the Colony. Yet from day to day probation officers appear in Court and make their reports, visit prisons, remand and probation institutions, go round Resettlement Estates and climb hillsides to find unnumbered huts. In working with employers, voluntary welfare agencies, fellow Government officers concerned with social services and friends and relatives of those referred to them, they make extensive use of the telephone. In between they draft their reports and maintain their case records.

50. The chief duties of a probation officer are firstly to carry out social inquiries on behalf of the Courts and to make reports which may assist judges and magistrates in deciding how to deal with persons who have been found guilty, and secondly to supervise those who are placed on probation. Inquiries into social background often involve one or more time-consuming interviews with the offenders at court or at the place of remand, as well as home visits and the interview of an employer or school teacher. Supervision means both home visiting and regular interviewing in a probation office. In addition, probation officers who are sometimes called 'the social welfare agents of the Courts' often have non-criminal cases referred to them and this provides a test of their knowledge of those welfare agencies which can best provide for the needs revealed by interview.

51. The total strength of the Section for the period under review was 24 officers; the effective strength was somewhat lower owing to the demands of training, both in-service and overseas. Of these officers, 14 manned the Probation Service which was responsible for the supervi- sion of 1,576 probationers and others. During the year there were 676 new cases and 726 of the total supervised completed their periods of supervision, leaving a grand total of 850 persons under supervision at the end of the year (See Appendix 13).

52. Despite the slight drop in the case load remaining at the end of the year and in the total number of social inquiries for the Courts,

14

Page 20Page 21