The most familiar sociological image of the probation officer sees him firmly committed to some variant of a psycho-pathological view of deviancy in which both society and volition are disregarded. It was from this assumption that the research sprang, the purpose being to examine the treatment ideologies held by probation officers. But from focussed interviews, it was clear that explanations of deviancy offered by the probation officers were wider than anticipated, encompassing both determinist and voluntarist accounts of behaviour. It is suggested that the structural context of probation work - utilitarian justice and casework treatment notions - creates more `space' for offering a greater variety of explanations than has often been appreciated. And, in offering these explanations probation officers do not necessarily reinterpret their clients' accounts which were sometimes accepted and at other times rejected.
How the cases were explained appears to depend on the circumstances of the case. The more serious the offender's criminal history or his personal or social problems, the more likely it was that the probation officer thought in determinist terms offering an `action' account. But equally, the respondents recognised the sometimes voluntary nature .4 delinquency, though this was generally in less serious cases.
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References
1.
Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and Drift. New York, Wiley .
2.
May, D. (1971). `Delinquency control and the treatment model: some implications of recent legislation' . British Journal of Criminology, 11 (4), 359-370 .
3.
Cohen, S. (1974). `Criminology and the sociology of deviance in Britain', in McIntosh, M. and Rock, P. (Eds). Deviance and Social Control, London, Tavistock , p. 32. We think, however, that the argument in our paper will be clarified if we assume that Cohen was referring to psychodynamic determinism because as our data and arguments seem to indicate, determined behaviour may be seen to be relatively rational given an offender's personal and social situation. We think that Matza's distinction between hard and soft determinism is helpful here (op. cit. p. 5 passim).
4.
Probation officer's reflections during the interview should not be confused with the motivational accounts they provided in their social inquiry reports, because our respondents did not always explicitly provide an account to the court. When they did so, this was sometimes a faithful presentation of their clients' views and, at other times, a retranslation for the purposes of the sentencers. The connection between accounts provided during interviews and those proffered in reports is, of course, problematic, but we are unable to explore it in this paper. However, if there are discrepancies, these should be explained in terms of the structural postion of probation officers in court rather than by simply indicting them for using casework terminology as a euphemism for social control.
5.
Monger, M. (1972). Casework in Probation. Second edition. London, Butterworth , p. 18.
6.
Taylor, I. , Walton, P. , and Young J. (1973). The New Criminology. London, Routledge , p. 7.
7.
Ibid. p. 9
8.
Ibid. p. 8.
9.
Clarke, M. J. (1975). `The impact of social science on conceptions of responsibility' . British Journal of Law and Society, 2 (1), 32-44 .
10.
Wheeler, S. (ed), (1968). Controlling Delinquents. New York, Wiley .
11.
The Streatfeild Report, (1961). Report of the Inter-departmental Committee on the Business of the Criminal Courts. Cmnd 1289. HMSO, London .
12.
We are aware that strictly speaking consideration of individual financial differences offends the moral calculus that is utilitarianism. But even the classical criminologists were aware that pecuniary punishments may increase the number of poor, and may deprive an innocent family of subsistence. See Taylor, Walton and Young, op. cit., pp. 1-7.
13.
This eclecticism is typified with some clarity in what is virtually a handbook for those working with offenders: Prins, H. (1973). Criminal Behaviour: An Introduction to Its Study and Treatment. London, Pitman .
14.
Zimmerman's article on rule used helped our thinking here. See Don Zimmerman (1971) `The Practicalities of Rule Use' in Jack Douglas (Ed) Understanding Everyday Life, London, Routledge .
15.
See the discussion in Carson, W. G. (1974). `The sociology of crime and the emergence of criminal laws', in McIntosh and Rock, op. cit.
16.
Clarke, op. cit.
17.
Matza, op. cit.
18.
This is clearly illustrated in the discussion following the Maria Colwell case. In her book on child care policy, Jean Packman took issue with Olive Stevenson's argument that social workers are the victims not the perpetrators of the legal and social system which assumes that parents will resume care of a child if their circumstances improve. She reminded us that social workers have made important contributions to the very legal and social system which they then find themselves in and so, to an extent, shape policy by dint of being `professionals'. See Packman, J. (1975). The Child's Generation. Oxford, Blackwell , p. 175.
19.
Taylor, Walton and Young, op. cit., p. 25.
20.
We are not denying that in some circumstances the psychiatric deluge has been used in social work as a seductive euphemism for social control. See Cohen, S. (1975) `It's all right for you to talk: political and sociological manifestos for social action', in Bailey, R. , and Brake, M. (Eds). Radical Social Work. London, Arnold , 76-95.
21.
Gouldner, A. W. (1970). The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. London, Heinemann , Chapter 3.
22.
The methods are described in greater detail in, Hardiker, P. (1975). Ideologies in Social Inquiry Reports. Final Progress Report to the Social Science Research Council.
23.
Hardiker, P. (1977). `Social work ideologies in the probation service.'British Journal of Social Work, 7 (2).
24.
These concepts of `action' and `infraction' are taken directly from Matza's critique of the American juvenile justice system (in Delinquency and Drift, op. cit.). `Action' explanations of crime refer to a wide range of ideas within which offence behaviour is seen as a reflection of a person's biological, psychological or social situation which makes law-breaking inevitable. Given these underlying problems, the offence is refracted as a `cry for help'. `Infraction' explanations echo the classic character of utilitarian justice in which criminality is thought of as a legal status rather than a personal characteristic; people may embrace this status in specific situations either because they are caught on the invitational edge of opportunities to commit crimes and/or because they happen to have been caught by the police. We built these two concepts into our coding frame and analysed the data accordingly. Because in many cases both `infraction' and `action' accounts were offered, we also had to devise a code of "both" to deal with this.
25.
Friedlander, K. (1947). The Psychoanalytical Approach to Juvenile Delinquency. London, Routledge .
26.
Wolfgang, M. E. , Savitz, L. , Johnston, N. (eds.) (1970). The Sociology of Crime and Delinquency. New York, Wiley .
27.
We think it is problematic whether some probation officers presume there are problems unless persuaded otherwise whilst others presume there are no problems unless they find them. Complex negotiations are likely to operate in this respect, but our research on treatment ideologies may provide us with one clue (Hardiker: 1977). Experienced officers trained on Home Office courses may be more likely to presume problems than their less experienced colleagues with sociology qualifications. Even so, it is unlikely that probation officers fit into a neat dichotomy in this respect.
28.
Also Brian Taylor (1976) `Motives for guilt-free pederasty: some literary considerations' . Sociological Review, 24) (1).
29.
See Matza, D. (1969). Becoming Deviant. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall , Chapter 6.
30.
Hardiker, (1977).
31.
32.
Bean, op. cit.
33.
Cohen, (1974).
34.
See Evans, R. (1976), `Some implications of an integrated model of social work for theory and practice' . British Journal of Social Work, 6, (No. 2.).
35.
This is attempted in greater detail in Curnock, K. and Hardiker, P.Practice Theories in Social Inquiry Reports. (In preparation).
36.
This, of course, is the gist of the `sociological' critique of social work, though to balance this a little, it is perhaps worth considering that there are clients who are `fundamentally and irremediably socially incompetent', for whom `need' is an unavoidably appropriate way of describing their circumstances. (See Michael Clarke (1976), `The limits of radical social work' , British Journal of Social Work, 6(4) (1).
