ment with the best prospects for recruits with wide interests and good honours degrees in general arts subjects who do not possess at the time specific qualifications in social work.
PROBATION
31 Probation work is regulated by the volume of crime, the detection of crime, the prosecution of criminals and the sentencing policies of the courts, and because of this future trends are comparatively unpredic- table. In practice, four more courts have been added this year at the North Kowloon Magistracy, and this has automatically meant that more cases have been referred to probation officers. A new court in Kwun Tong has made it necessary to set up an independent probation office there. An additional probation officer has been posted in the New Territories to serve the court at Tsuen Wan.
32 The duties of probation officers are to carry out social inquiries for the courts; to make reports which may help judges and magistrates to decide how to deal with those who have been found guilty; and to supervise those who are entrusted to their charge by the courts. Investi- gations of social background involve long interviews with the offenders and often mean home visits and calls upon school teachers. Probation Officers discuss their charges with employers, voluntary welfare agencies, fellow government officers in other social services, and friends and relatives of those on probation. In between they draft their reports, bring their case records up-to-date or appear in court. All this is prodi- gal of time; but the tendency to use probation officers increasingly for social inquiries to assist in sentencing, not necessarily with a probation order in prospect, is welcome. The subsequent work of supervision, arising out of a probation order, involves both visiting at home and regular interviewing in a probation office. A common misapprehension is that probation officers deal only with young males. This is not so. They also have to deal with women and girls (women officers are used for this work) and with adult males.
33 The number of posts provided for probation work (as distinct from work in correctional institutions) was thirty four at the end of the year, but strength is always lower because of the demands of training, both in-service and oversea. The number of officers actually available and gazetted averaged under twenty-seven, and those officers were responsible for the supervision of an active caseload of over sixteen hundred probationers and others during the period. Detailed figures are
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