Bringing Hope and Change

Abstract

Although youth probation (in some countries described as youth justice or youth offending work) has been widely discussed in older and more recent criminological literature, less attention has been paid to youth probation officers’ accounts of their attitudes and strategies. In this study, the author uses in-depth interviews with 20 youth probation officers in Toronto, examining officers’ attitudes toward the youth they work with and how these attitudes are reflected in the strategies that the officers use to achieve their professional goals. Findings reveal that the officers balance their authoritative and supportive roles not only to hold youth accountable, to encourage them to assert control over their lives, and to maintain optimism about the possibility of a nondeviant life, but also to assist the youth in attaining the means and resources necessary to make positive changes. These findings are interpreted within the framework of Canadian youth justice legislation as well as the broader desistance literature.

Keywords

youth justice probation officers youth offenders youth probation practice desistance prosocial change rehabilitation behavior change

Given the frequency with which courts place offenders on probation in lieu of imprisonment (Petersilia, 1997), probation officers play a vital role in the criminal justice system. The tension inherent in youth justice officers’ balance of authority and support has been reflected in conclusions of studies conducted in different parts of the world (Cross, Evans, & Minks, 2002; Trotter, 2006). Such studies emphasize the difficulties in reconciling the conflicting goals of punishment and welfare among youth justice professionals, and in balancing a care approach that focuses on probationer rehabilitation with a control approach that prioritizes community safety (Vidal & Skeem, 2008). This balancing of individual needs with community safety has also been documented in research on other criminal justice professionals, such as the correctional officers in a California women’s prison who struggled with responding to inmates’ needs while prioritizing the protection of the community through inmate management (Kruttschnitt & Gartner, 2005). Similarly, in her ethnographic work, Lynch (1998) argued that the parole officers she studied individualized their assessments of the offenders they worked with, resisting conformity to a “new penology” that emphasizes risk management over individual rehabilitation.

In the context of such tensions, the present study examined how youth probation officers perceive young offenders and their life circumstances, and it explored the extent to which the officers’ strategies to assist the youth during their transition to a nondeviant life are consistent with these attitudes. By strategies, I refer here to the officers’ explicit actions (e.g., threatening the youth with breach of probation) as well as their more subtle ways of interacting with the youth (e.g., allowing youth to control certain aspects of their time on probation) to encourage them to lead nondeviant lives. The Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA; discussed in detail later) grants youth probation officers the freedom to decide which official methods to use in attaining the overarching goal of rehabilitating and reintegrating young offenders into mainstream society. These methods may include referring youth to counseling services, encouraging parental involvement in youth’s lives, collaborating with schools to ensure the youth’s continued attendance, and so on. Given the flexibility that the officers have in conducting their jobs, I investigated the officers’ “strategies” to highlight the personalized, individual ways in which officers meet their professional responsibilities and challenges, rather than the more formal, official methods open to them. In conveying to participants that I was interested in the specific “strategies” that they use to attain their professional goals, I emphasized that my focus was on their personal experience as probation officers. At the same time, the term strategies was used deliberately to allow officers to include more formal, official methods if they played a role in the personalized interaction the officers had with the youth without being confined only to a discussion of these methods. This study thus explored the subjective experiences of probation officers, emphasizing how the officers view the young persons they work with and how these views are manifested in the strategies they use to attain their professional goals.

This article is organized as follows: First, I review relevant literature on youth justice practice, desistance, and decision making. Next, I examine historical shifts in Canadian youth justice legislation and discuss the current legislation in place. I then provide details on the methodology used in the study before presenting the findings regarding (a) the officers’ attitudes and (b) the officers’ strategies. Following a discussion of these findings in the context of the Canadian youth justice system as well as the broader literature on desistance, the article concludes with recommendations for future research.

Literature Review

Although youth probation work is a well-researched topic (Anderson & Spanier, 1980; Corrado, Gronsdahl, MacAlister, & Cohen, 2010; Schwalbe & Maschi, 2009), few researchers have explored youth probation officers’ attitudes toward the youth whom they are responsible for (Drass & Spencer, 1987; Gaarder, Rodriguez, & Zatz, 2004; Lopez & Russell, 2008) and how these attitudes are reflected in the way they do their jobs (Schwalbe & Maschi, 2009; Stewart et al., 1994). Anderson and Spanier’s (1980) study is a notable exception insofar as it explored not only the extent to which 255 youth probation officers viewed the youth they interacted with as “delinquent” but also how this view affected what the officers understood to be their professional responsibilities. More recently, Schwalbe and Maschi (2009) analyzed data from a sample of 308 probation officers, concluding that, although probation officers used multiple approaches in their interaction with their clients, younger and high-risk youth as well as those with prior social service involvements are likely to receive interventions that are more intensive. Despite their emphasis on the officers’ attitudes toward their clients, Anderson and Spanier did not examine the specific strategies that the officers employed in their interaction with youth offenders. Although Schwalbe and Maschi went some way in filling this particular gap, there is still an absence of more in-depth literature on the subjective attitudes of probation officers and how these attitudes are manifested in their interaction with the youth they work with.

By building on the works of Anderson and Spanier (1980), and Schwalbe and Maschi (2009), I aim to present a detailed account of how youth probation officers handle their professional responsibilities, including how their perceptions of these responsibilities are affected by current Canadian youth justice legislation. Considering the role that youth probation officers play in the rehabilitation and reintegration of youth offenders into mainstream society, an analysis of their strategies and attitudes may have valuable policy implications. Before any such assessment is possible, however, a detailed understanding of the officers’ perspectives and strategies is needed, and it is this gap that this study sought to fill.

Though not restricted to youth probation, of relevance here are studies of techniques, skills, and programs used by practitioners working with offenders (e.g., McMurran, 2002; Merrington & Stanley, 2004; Trotter, 2006). In his book on interacting with “involuntary clients,” Trotter highlights the importance of balancing the legalistic and supportive roles integral to the jobs of many professionals working with such clients (Trotter, 2006; Rooney, 2009) as well as the significance of evidence-based research when constructing programs for the treatment of offenders. Indeed, such research has become widespread in recent years, with scholars investing a great deal of effort in developing a better understanding of “what works” in corrections (Cullen & Gendreau, 2001; Farrall, 2002). Trotter (2006) has argued, for example, that in youth probation specifically, reinforcing clients’ prosocial behavior during supervision is effective in reducing reoffending. Similarly, in the context of England and Wales, Merrington and Stanley (2004) have noted that effective interventions must be well targeted and supported, as well as reinforced by good case management. Much of this literature has focused more on the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions rather than on the subjective realities of practitioners, and much of it has focused on work with adults. The present study is focused on the practices of youth probation officers as seen through their own lens; moreover, it aims to present not a normative description of how probation officers should interact with youth (Rooney, 2009) but of how officers actually do interact with these youth. In this way, it departs from the expansive literature on “what works” to delve into the details of how youth probation officers in Canada view and do their jobs.

In addition to the literature on evidence-based research, scholars have investigated the effectiveness of probation work in general and the moral and philosophical nature of the officer–client relationship, with an emphasis on how probation affects offender desistance (McNeill, 2006; 2009). Several decades ago, in an era when treatment of offenders was being discredited empirically and ethically (McNeill, 2006), some scholars argued for a “nontreatment” approach. Such an approach aimed to help offenders rather than treat them (Bottoms & McWilliams, 1979), and strove to arrive on a shared assessment of the client’s situation rather than a diagnosis (McNeill, 2006). Research regarding the impact of probation on desistance has since revolved around debates regarding the appropriate method of interacting with offenders, and whether interventions with youth offenders accomplish their intended goals. Following a decline in focus on resettlement issues, for example, recent shifts in correctional thinking have trended away from a nontreatment approach toward one that emphasizes reintegration and resettlement processes that assist offenders in their efforts to desist from crime (Maguire & Raynor, 2006).

McNeill (2006) discussed the nontreatment approach and Raynor and Vanstone’s (1994) revision of this approach, which explicitly rejected Bottoms and McWilliams’s (1979) dichotomization of help and treatment. McNeill noted that a paradigm based on the “what works” initiative developed in the years following Raynor and Vanstone’s revision of the nontreatment approach. This paradigm, unlike the “nontreatment” approach and its revision, focuses on managing offender risk and developing interventions designed to reduce reoffending and protect the public by meeting offenders’ criminogenic needs. McNeill argued, however, that these approaches “all begin in the wrong place” (p. 45), because they explore how practice should be constructed before questioning how change should be understood. He thus presents a paradigm that is designed to support the process of desistance and that is based on interventions that are founded on respect and legitimacy; that “foster agency and reflexivity”; that focus on “social capital (opportunities) as well as human capital (motivations and capacities)”; and that exploit strengths as well as address risks and needs (McNeill, 2006, p. 55).

A separate body of literature has focused on decision making regarding sentencing recommendations and risk evaluations among youth probation officers in particular (Bridges & Steen, 1998; Lopez & Russell, 2008). Researchers in this area have also examined predictors of juvenile probation officers’ rehabilitative orientation, concluding that employment type among probation officers, as well as their perceptions of juveniles’ social support systems were strong predictors (Lopez & Russell, 2008). Within the Canadian context specifically, Corrado, Gronsdahl, MacAlister, and Cohen (2010) concluded that youth probation officers reject sentencing recommendations based on polarized models of justice (such as the welfare or crime control models), instead preferring more eclectic models. The corporatist model is one example of an eclectic model of youth justice. It emphasizes increased discretion among youth justice professionals and the use of merged administrative decision making among several multidisciplinary juvenile justice agencies. The modified justice model, another example of an eclectic model, reflects the more recent trend (which became evident first in the United Kingdom) of emphasizing procedural justice above all while injecting elements of a welfare and crime control mode. In the following section, I describe important historical shifts in Canadian youth justice legislation, noting the ways in which these shifts also reflect international trends in youth justice.

Canadian Youth Justice Legislation

Researchers studying youth justice in countries such as Scotland (McAra, 2006) and Japan (Fenwick, 2006) have documented historic shifts away from protection of youth offenders and toward punishment and management of these offenders. Thus, where youth justice systems first strove to safeguard the well-being of youth offenders, they now emphasize the need to control the offenders. Similarly, Smandych (2006) has argued that Canada’s youth justice system has followed other countries in its pattern of legislative changes. Like England and Wales, Australia, and the United States, Canada witnessed a shift from a predominantly welfare-oriented model to one that emphasized punishment and control of the young offender.

The first Canadian youth justice legislation was the Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA) of 1908, implemented in Canada with the belief that unlike adult offenders, there was still hope that youth offenders were capable of leading prosocial lives (Tanner, 2001) and that a harmful social environment was largely the root of their deviant behavior. Under the JDA, youth probation officers were expected to act in the “best interests of the child” by providing information that would assist judges in making decisions about youth offenders (Corrado et al., 2010, p. 2). This legislation was in place until 1984, when it was replaced by the Young Offenders Act (YOA).

The YOA’s replacement of the JDA represented a legislative change in the youth justice system that most scholars agree reflected a shift away from the aforementioned welfare model of the JDA (Doob & Sprott, 2004). Some critics of the new legislation argued that it reflected a mixture of the welfare model and the crime control model, which endorses more stringent crime control to prioritize community safety (Tanner, 2001). Leschied and Gendreau (1986) have argued that the YOA mimicked policies emanating from the justice model of the United States that prioritized “just deserts” and the idea that the justice system should be based on punishments proportionate to the crime committed without the influence of judicial discretion. With the YOA in place, “the ‘young offender’ became viewed as a deviant adolescent who was ‘responsible for [his or her] actions and should be held accountable’” (Canada, YOA, Section 3, in Smandych, 2006). Consistent with a justice model, youth probation officers’ roles under the YOA shifted toward upholding due process and public safety principles (Corrado et al., 2010), but the goal of the juvenile justice system became punishment rather than promotion of the welfare of the youth. With structured discretion and the curtailing of indeterminate sentences, the YOA prioritized minimal interference and the informed rights of the youth offender (Leschied & Gendreau, 1986).

Although the YOA was intended to move away from the paternalistic and archaic practices of the JDA, scholars argued that it fell short of fulfilling its intended purpose: Despite the YOA’s principle that criminal justice officials should exercise restraint when intervening in the lives of young people, there was an increase in the number of youth facing custodial sanctions, and a decrease in the extent to which police used informal action when dealing with alleged youth offenders (Carrington & Schulenberg, 2004). Indeed, one of the most widely perceived failures of the YOA lay in its tendency to bring large numbers of offenders into the court system. Due in part to federal government concerns about interprovincial variation in the use of the youth justice system, provincial overuse of the system, and high rates of custodial sentences for minor offenses, the YOA was ultimately abandoned and replaced by the YCJA in 2002.

The current legislation in place is still the YCJA (Doob & Sprott, 2004), which is premised on the belief that to be a youth is to be “diminished in the moral and intellectual sense” (Bala, 2003, p. 4). The YCJA was designed to accomplish two major objectives that the YOA was seen as failing to address: a reduction in the use of courts and custody for the majority of youth offenders, and an improvement in “the effectiveness of responses to the relatively small number of young offenders convicted of serious crimes of violence” (Bala, Carrington, & Roberts, 2009, p. 133). The YCJA sees offenses as something that the state should respond to in a “measured, proportional manner” with structured decision making (Doob & Sprott, 2004, p. 187) and with the goal of limiting use of custody. A significant aim of the YCJA is thus to distinguish serious and minor offenders, diverting the latter away from the formal court system through the use of extrajudicial sanctions (Barnhorst, 2004; Doob & Sprott, 2004; Smandych, 2006) that may include warnings, referrals to community programs, and so on. As the YCJA diverts minor offenders away from the court system through extrajudicial measures, there has been an increase in the number of serious offenders entering the court system, with a specific spike in the number of violent youth offenders (Taylor-Butts & Bressan, 2006).

More so than previous legislation, the YCJA attempts to walk the line between the demand for punitive solutions to youth crime and the recognition that youth may be more deserving of leniency due to their psychological and moral immaturity. Despite the latter feature, more critical scholars (Smandych, 2006) have noted that the YCJA has also had the effect of treating youth offenders like adult offenders by, for example, weakening the privacy protections on youth offender cases. In fact, Smandych (2006) has argued that in some ways, the YCJA is simply a continuation of the departure from a welfare model designed to protect the youth offender, with an increased focus on risk management and adulteration of youth. Finally, Smandych has noted that although the YCJA reflects an attempt to adhere to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, some experts believe that it goes beyond the requirements of the UN Convention by containing principles that demand that youth justice judges not take into consideration the welfare of the child. There is thus a concern that, without an explicit attempt to protect the welfare of youth offenders the way the JDA did, the rights of youth offenders may ultimately be overridden in favor of “just deserts.”

It is in this complex context that youth probation officers now operate. The present study draws on in-depth interview data obtained from six youth probation offices located in Toronto in May and June of 2009 with a view to developing a more well-rounded understanding of the officers’ subjective experiences working with youth offenders.

Data and Method

Sample

Data for this study were obtained through semistructured interviewing with 20 youth probation officers working in and around the Greater Toronto Area. After initial participant contact information was obtained from a probation office manager, participants were recruited through purposive sampling to gain maximum diversity in the sample. Every officer in this study welcomed the opportunity to discuss his or her work, and many were eager to recommend other officers for participation. To avoid biasing the sample by relying on this method of snowball sampling, however, sampling was conducted to obtain the viewpoints of officers who were trained in different legislative eras and who differed in their age, race, gender, and levels of experience.

Probation offices were located in various parts of Toronto, and youth offenders were assigned to offices based on their physical address. Participants stemmed from six probation offices that catered to different areas in the city, with offices located in more high-risk areas attracting high-risk youth and vice versa. This was done to obtain the diversity in perspectives that might result from officers interacting with different types of youth. The location of the offices did not, however, translate into differences in either the officers’ beliefs about the youth or their interaction with the youth. Each probation officer worked with a caseload of approximately 28 youth, with youth being assigned to probation officers on a random, rolling basis (although there was the possibility of “exchanging” youth in case a probation officer believed that a youth would have a stronger working relationship with another officer). The sample generally reflected broader trends in Toronto’s youth probation work, with more women (n = 12) than men (n = 8) and a preponderance of Caucasian workers. Participants ranged widely in their age and level of experience, with one participant who had been an officer for under a year, and eight who had been officers for 10 years or more. The majority of the officers had worked in probation for 1 to 4 years (n = 9).

Analytic Method

Prospective participants were informed prior to commencing the interview that the broad purpose of the interview was to understand how they viewed their professional responsibilities and how they accomplished what they understood to be their professional goals. Initial questions in the interview schedule explored officers’ opinions on their roles in the youth justice system. For example, I asked officers to describe their professional duties, what they hoped to accomplish in the lives of the youth, what they felt was the most important part of their job, and what they thought it took to be a good probation officer. These questions were intended to reveal consistency of the officers’ beliefs with youth justice models that prioritize extreme goals with rehabilitation on one end and control on the other versus “mixed” models that combine the two elements.

Questions then shifted to the officers’ perceptions of the young persons they work with. Here, I asked participants what they felt about working with youth specifically, what the most difficult (and rewarding) part of working with youth was, what specific role they saw themselves playing in the young persons’ lives, and so on. Final questions pertained to the specific strategies that the officers used in attaining the professional responsibilities they described earlier in the interview. Participants were broadly asked what their strategies for attaining their professional goals were and whether they had any general philosophies or beliefs about how to do their jobs. More specific questions in this section were based on the participants’ responses to earlier questions. For example, officers who mentioned struggling with balancing their multiple (supervisory, legal, referral) professional responsibilities were asked about their strategies for accomplishing this difficult goal. Officers were also asked how they interact with different “types” of youth, what factors into their decision to charge youth with breach of probation, and so on. These questions drew on the correctional literature on youth justice that has focused on the inherent tension in criminal justice professionals’ responsibilities as they attempt to control the offending behavior of the youth and support them through their transition to a nondeviant life (Lynch, 1998; Rex, 1999; Vidal & Skeem, 2007).

The interviews lasted 45 minutes on average and were audiotaped with the consent of the participants in all but one case, where the participant requested that the interview not be recorded. Following transcription, I conducted detailed inductive coding of the data (Charmaz, 2003). Initial coding was conducted using “sensitizing concepts” (Charmaz, 2003, p. 319) drawn from the literature on youth justice regarding the balancing of multiple roles, the goals of rehabilitation versus control, and so on. Following this, I conducted “action coding” (coding based on what is happening) on the interview data to move from the larger topic of the officers’ role in the youth justice system to a more narrow understanding of the strategies that the probation officers use at the ground level to assist the youth in leading nondeviant lives. Finally, to unify the data in a meaningful way, I carried out focused coding to construct more abstract concepts and generalizations based on frequently reappearing initial codes.

The results presented in the next section are organized by the themes that emerged from the interview data: I first present results pertaining to the officers’ attitudes toward the youth, after which I detail the strategies the officers use to attain their primary goal of encouraging positive change among the youth.

Results

Attitudes Toward Youth Offenders

In this section, I outline the main themes that emerged from the interview data regarding the officers’ attitudes toward their clients¹ and their methods of encouraging desistance among the youth. I first describe their emphasis on the need to maintain a sympathetic attitude toward their clients. Next, I describe the officers’ attempts at discovering their clients’ “alternative stories”—narratives that focus on the positive elements of the youth’s life circumstances—and at focusing on their clients’ resilience in the face of adversity. These themes reflect the officers’ efforts at understanding not only how the youth came to engage in criminal behavior but also the reasons there are for hope that the youth can lead nondeviant lives. Finally, I briefly describe the officers’ opinions on working with male versus female youth.

Sympathy and Empathy

The youth probation officers repeatedly emphasized that, to gain the trust of their clients, it was important not to appear judgmental. Although the officers recognized that some of the crimes committed by their clients were very serious, they also noted that the vast majority of their clients had been exposed to extremely difficult circumstances. The number of youth who were convicted of serious crimes was described as a result of the YCJA handling less serious crimes through community measures rather than through criminal justice proceedings, and the probation officers emphasized that the youth who did end up under their supervision had much more complicated and conflict-ridden lives. The probation officers unanimously voiced support for a strategy strongly reminiscent of the “care approach” (Vidal & Skeem, 2007) centered on the youth offenders’ rehabilitation. Consistent with broader research on probation work (Annison, Eadie, & Knight, 2008), the officers in this study emphasized the importance of working individually with youth offenders to forge productive relationships with them. Each of the 20 respondents, like this one, claimed that to do this, maintaining a sympathetic attitude toward their clients was essential:

I mean my focus is on really trying to understand where they’re coming from and at the same time trying to build a rapport, have them gain some feeling of some trust, of openness, being nonjudgmental because I’m very cognizant of that fact that they’ve experienced a lot of hardships in their lives, most of these kids. Very rarely do we get the upper class who’s just chosen to make some, some very wrong decisions—it’s usually a case of neglect, or mental health.

Representative of the large majority of the cases that the officers deal with, this probation officer recounted the story of one of her clients who had been abandoned by his mother a few years ago:

That was a horrible story. His mother moved . . . she moved . . . she didn’t want him anymore. He was 17 at the time . . . she paid the rent for a month, she left the freezer full of pizzas, took all the furniture. So when he got home at night, she’d moved, left a note “goodbye.” No forwarding address, and a mattress on the floor, the month’s rent paid in advance, the freezer full of pizza, and she’d moved. That was the end of that. That was it. And he had been kicked around before that, so that was just the last straw.

In addition to the challenge inherent in interacting with youth who have undergone such a host of problems, the difficulty in encouraging youth offenders to want to adopt changes is exemplified in the following case of a young girl who voluntarily stayed in an abusive relationship. More than three quarters of the respondents underlined the importance of recognizing that most of their clients suffered from mental and emotional problems, and supporting the youth through the conversion to a nondeviant life was all the more difficult because of this:

She’d often disclose a lot about being in an abusive relationship and she talked a lot about some of the abuse, and it was just torturous stuff . . . very violent, extremely violent relationship to the point where she suffered brain injury from the abuse that she had suffered.

Thus, although the officers acknowledge that the serious crimes that the youth had been convicted of were far from excusable, none of the officers expressed surprise the youth had turned to crime in the first place, given the sheer number of difficult situations they had encountered during their relatively short lives. In addition, although none of the officers described their roles as therapeutic, their attitudes do reflect the importance of the officer–offender relationship in the desistance process (Burnett & McNeill, 2005), which in turn underscores their commitment to the individual needs of their clients. Indeed, many of the officers mimicked Cordess’s (2002) sentiment that the most rewarding aspect of their jobs involved the feeling of “being trusted and being allowed truly ‘alongside’ [a] young person,” a phenomenon that Cordess refers to as “building and nurturing a therapeutic alliance” (p. 75).

Alternative Stories, Youth Identity, and Change

Not that we don’t talk about what happened and how they got to be on probation . . . but I also try to look for sort of bright, shining lights—alternative stories. Because they’re just not who they are on probation. They’re not being robbers . . . that’s not who they are; it’s what they did, but it’s not who they are.

A major theme found in the data was that of the probation officers’ belief that the youth had made bad choices, but were not bad people. Of the 20 respondents, 14 expressed the view that the youth’s current situation was a product of wrong decisions, rather than a reflection of the youth’s true identity. Indeed, it is this belief that allows the officers to maintain their optimistic outlook: Unlike their attitude toward adult offenders, the officers wholeheartedly believe that, if the right changes are made, the genuine character of the youth will overpower all the prevalent negativity in their lives. Being in their most formative years, the youth are not set in their ways (criminally or otherwise), and the officers are convinced that there is still much hope for change. Indeed, the officers expressed this view by contrasting their beliefs about adult offenders, who they argued are often too embedded in criminal lifestyles to adopt positive changes. For the youth to see that such changes are possible, however, the officers must highlight for them the benefits of having goals and ambitions.

One officer described the “other parts” of the youth’s life as “alternative stories” that do not define the youth as a criminal or a deviant. These stories explain how the circumstances of the youth’s life led to their decision to behave criminally, and they moreover emphasize the future plans and goals of the youth over their past decisions, allowing them to see these simply as bad decisions rather than manifestations of character-defining acts. Inderbitzin (2009) examined the narratives of youth offenders attempting to reintegrate into mainstream society, noting that these emerging adults created self-narratives “to figure out who they were and who they wanted to become” (Inderbitzin, 2009, p. 456). The officers in this study assist their clients in the creation of such narratives, focusing on the positive elements of their lives and character using a future-oriented perspective. This belief in the positive identities of youth offenders can also be analyzed in the context of Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph’s (2002) theory of cognitive transformation: Using a symbolic interactionist theory of desistance that emphasizes female offenders’ agency in their own cognitive and identity transformations, Giordano et al. argue that it is crucial to examine “the important period when actors make initial attempts to veer off a deviant pathway” and to focus on “cognitive changes, rather than a small set of predictors” (Giordano et al., 2002, p. 992). The findings in this section support the argument by Giordano et al. insofar as the officers voiced strong support for the notion that focusing on the youth offenders’ identities during the key transition to a nondeviant life was of great importance.

The officers’ focus on “alternative stories” is also reminiscent of Maruna’s (2004) discussion of how ex-offenders’ personal histories are “rewritten” and their pasts “reconstructed.” The ex-offenders in his sample reinvented their histories in this way to maintain psychological continuity: By rewriting their pasts, they were able to rationalize their decision to adopt a nondeviant lifestyle while acknowledging—and perhaps even justifying—their criminal history. Although the officers in this sample are not interacting with ex-offenders, they may be seen as beginning to write an alternative narrative of the youth’s lives. In such cases, the officers’ emphasis is not on the aspects of the youths’ life that need to be “knifed off” but rather on the cognitive transformations they need to trigger among the youth to help them desist from crime. Indeed, prior research on desistance has noted the importance of optimism among ex-offenders as they attempt to desist from crime (Burnett & Maruna, 2004). The officers in this study thus “rewrite” their clients’ life histories in a way that encourages the youth to believe that they are indeed capable of change.

The belief in the inherently positive and resilient character of their clients also permits the officers to play down their authoritative positions; instead, they take on the role of an attentive listener, one who makes an effort to focus on the strength of the youth’s positive attributes and traits. As one officer explained,

They’re so young, like they’re under the age of 18 and so their lives haven’t even started yet . . . and they’ve had things happen to them or experiences that I don’t even know as an adult that I could handle, so you see the resilience that a lot of these youth have, and that creates hope for me.

One female officer discussed how emotional investment and sympathy for the offender led to difficulties in maintaining an objective attitude toward the offender and his or her crime. Like several officers, she noted that she often consciously thought of the victims of the youth’s crime, something that she believed was easy to forget:

We’re so inundated with the youth, and we’re their advocate, which isn’t bad because they need advocates. But I say pretend that the victim’s family is talking to you. What have you done to hold the person who did this harm to me accountable? And if you can say in your heart what you’ve done, then you have done it. But many of [the officers] don’t think about [the victims] . . . many of [the officers] think “oh, I don’t want to get him charged, I don’t wanna do that” which isn’t going to help.

The officers’ attitudes toward their clients, however, were not uniformly or consistently positive. The officers frequently voiced frustration or a sense of hopelessness in response to the fact that many (some officers said most) of their clients did not have success stories. As Inderbitzin (2009) noted, despite adolescent offenders’ narratives of hope as they reentered the community, within a few months of their release from prison, “each was overcome by the frustration of trying to find their way in a world that made no place for them” (p. 473). The number of failure stories complicates the officers’ attitudes toward their clients, with many officers vacillating between sympathy and frustration. Indeed, some officers even noted that they had to take some time off youth probation work because their frustration had reached unbearable levels. Even while maintaining that the youth’s current situation is a product of undeniably difficult life circumstances, several probation officers thus explained the difficulty in being sympathetic. As one officer straightforwardly put it,

There are some people in this world, no matter how hard you try, you just don’t like them. They’re gonna become adults that people don’t like, and we meet them, and they’re, they’re the assholes of society, and the pricks. And I’m privy to a lot of information as to what made the person an asshole, so I understand why they went down that road, but it doesn’t get rid of my feelings towards the person. Yes, the person grew up with no father; yes, the person grew up with a prostitute, crack-addicted mother who used to slap them around; yes, the person witnessed a murder when they were 6 years old—their babysitter got shot in front of them. Yes, I understand that this person has gone through all these traumatic events and, and has had nothing given to them easily, um . . . and yes, I understand why you’re such a prick now. But I still hate you because you’re a prick!

Thus, even being fully aware of the factors that played into the youth’s current situation sometimes does not necessarily translate into a wholly sympathetic view of the youth on the part of the officer. Despite this, using the refrain “it’s what they did; it’s not who they are” and the focus on alternative stories makes it easier for the officers to move past the youth’s antiauthoritative and often rebellious attitudes.

A Note on Working With Female Clients

Although not the focus of this study, it is also worth noting here that the probation officers frequently voiced strong opinions on working with male versus female clients, with many expressing a clear preference for working with boys instead of girls. They described girls as more “complex,” and two male officers noted that working with a young girl was sometimes rather uncomfortable when the girls were “provocative.” These two officers said that, to preempt such situations, they had a policy of leaving the door open when interacting with female clients.

Another male officer expressed the belief that female clients were less likely to open up to male probation officers than they were to female officers. A female officer expressed the same belief but also noted that “girls have a lot more . . . not baggage, but trauma.” One female officer felt that girls were “more willing to talk about their emotions,” whereas another said that “males . . . don’t need as much hand-holding.” Despite some officers’ belief that female clients respond better to female officers, this officer expressed a strong preference against having girls in her caseload because of the difficulty stemming from the fact that females “are very emotionally charged in their teenage years—everything is emotion to them.” Yet, another female officer said that she enjoys working with girls because as a female herself, she “can kinda understand where they’re coming from.”

Thus, although there were no consistent findings regarding the officers’ gender, there was more consistency in the officers’ preferences for the gender of their clients: Most of the officers preferred working with male clients, and all the officers who raised the issue of their clients’ gender agreed that female clients were often not only more talkative than their male counterparts, but also more challenging because of their increased emotionality. For some officers, as noted, this facet of working with female youth offenders was overwhelming enough that they preferred not to work with girls at all. These findings are consistent with the study by Gaarder et al. (2004) on the attitudes of various professionals (including juvenile probation officers) toward young female offenders. Probation officers in the study by Gaarder et al. described female offenders in terms similar to those employed by the participants in this study: They spoke of girls being “harder to work with” and as having “too many issues” (p. 557). Like the officers in the study by Gaarder et al., the probation officers in this study also flagged young girls’ sexuality as being problematic. Although the officers in this study were usually sympathetic toward their female clients’ life situations, the overall conclusion of the study by Gaarder et al.—that girls are perceived as being “troubled and troublesome” (p. 12)—generally applies to this study.

Strategies

Before examining the specific strategies that the officers employed in encouraging the youth to change their lives, it is worth describing the emphasis officers placed on balancing their roles as authority and support figures in the young persons’ lives, because each of their strategies revolved around this balance. Although officers’ authority and support roles appear to conflict with one another, every officer emphasized that their authority was only a tool to be used to help the youth offender. The tension that might exist in their professional responsibilities is thus reconciled in their minds by the way in which they use their different roles to complement—rather than substitute—one another. That they can relieve the conflict of their responsibilities does not mean, however, that this is easily achieved: The probation officers strive to maintain a perfect balance of authority and support, a feature of their job that most officers (regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, or experience) highlight as being the most difficult. Indeed, despite their support for a “care” approach, the officers’ actual strategies of interaction were strongly reminiscent of the well established and robust finding of a “care versus control” conflict (Kruttschnitt & Gartner, 2005; Lynch, 1998; Rex, 1999; Vidal & Skeem, 2007) that forces criminal justice professionals to balance the rehabilitation of their clients with the public and legal demand for community safety:

Balancing the role between a support and being in a position of authority . . . I think that’s such a hard kinda line to draw for them (the youth), and I think that’s the hardest part, because it would be really easy to just forget about a court order for a moment, but you can’t.

Next, I outline four main strategies that the officers use to assist youth during their transition to a nondeviant lifestyle: (a) The officers’ strategy of holding the youth accountable reflects a reliance on their authoritative role; (b) the officers’ strategy of celebrating the youth’s small successes reflects their roles primarily as support figures; (c) also reflective of their roles as support figures, the officers refer youth to, and collaborate with, other agencies and institutions designed to assist youth with attaining the means necessary to lead nondeviant lives; and (d) as the officers believe that the youth have to be amenable to change if change is to occur, they combine their authoritative and supportive roles to motivate youth to take control of their lives.

Holding the Youth Accountable

It has to be clear-cut and that way there’s no gray area when you do kinda have to put your foot down and say “hey, you’ve been screwing off and you have to come see me once a week.” They know that it’s because of what they did and it’s not me power-tripping, but that it’s me saying “you’re being held accountable.”

As the quote above suggests, even when the officers use (rather than simply threaten the youth with) a charge, most present it to the youth as a result of the youth’s own behavior. Consistent with the belief that the youth are resilient, the officers push the youth to hold themselves accountable. As such, they make it clear that although they do not want to use their authority, the youth’s behavior has necessitated it. By giving the youth control over which direction the relationship takes, the officers convey to the youth that if they act in accordance with their court order, and if they make efforts to adopt positive changes, their time on probation can pass very easily. Alternatively, if they choose to disobey the court’s orders, then the charge that results is of their own doing. It is important to note that the officers used this strategy not only as a means of encouraging the youth to take responsibility of their own lives but also preemptively to block feelings of guilt that may emerge if the youth do not successfully complete probation.

Ultimately, the youth have the opportunity to assert control over an important arena in their lives, and they see that if they do the right thing (as defined by the court order), their time in probation can be easier. Although this strategy emphasizes the officers’ authoritative role, it goes hand-in-hand with their supportive role: Many officers use their comfortable rapport and working relationship with the youth as proof that they do not want to charge the youth, but that they have no choice if the youth break their court orders. The officers highlight how the youth can control his or her life with the support of the officer. The following quote demonstrates how the officer moves from holding the youth accountable to encouraging the youth to hold himself or herself accountable.

“If you don’t show up to your meetings, your appointments, you’re forcing me into a position I don’t wanna be in—you’re doing it, not me. You’re forcing me to be a prick; I don’t wanna be one, because I like you, I think you’re a cool kid . . . Do you understand me?” “Yeah Sir, I do.” “Thank you. What are we gonna do about this?” “I’ll, I’ll get better at this.” “I don’t want your promises—I need a commitment here, I need to know that you’re gonna do this.” “You’re right, you’re right, Sir.”

This strategy also serves the important function of instilling an agentic element in the hopeful attitude that the officers are encouraging the youth to adopt. By reminding their clients that the outcome of their probation depends significantly on their own behavior, the officers encourage the youth to believe that they have the ability to achieve a desired outcome (desistance from crime). It is this kind of hope, rather than a simple wishful thinking that they can stop offending (Burnett & Maruna, 2004), that the officers strive to instill in the youth.

Celebrating Small Successes

He’s got a lot of special needs as well . . . but he still managed to get into a program where he learnt a trade and got a certificate and a license and um, and he was really proud about it. And he came in and he said that when he went home and showed his Mom, she said, “that’s it? That’s all you’ve got? . . . ” And I was able to like, you know, praise him for all the accomplishments before, and he was . . . moved by the fact that someone cared enough to acknowledge his accomplishments. Because for him, those were huge accomplishments.

Key to making a youth believe in his or her own potential is taking his or her accomplishments seriously and giving the youth credit for them. Consistent with their sympathetic attitudes, 14 of the 20 officers described their efforts to emphasize each success of the youth, irrespective of how small it may appear. This is especially significant because many of the officers highlighted the absence of adequate prosocial support networks in the youth’s life. Consistent with prior literature in the area (Lopez & Russell, 2008), the officers’ awareness of the youth offenders’ lack of social support strongly shaped how the officers treated the youth. The officers regard the celebration of small successes as being realistic—rather than pessimistic—about the possibilities for these youth. Every step counts not only because it represents one step toward a fully nondeviant lifestyle but also, and perhaps more importantly, because it reflects the psychological transformation required to adopt a nondeviant lifestyle. The next strategy reflects how the officers move beyond the psychological transition to assist youth in meeting their material, psychological, and social needs.

Collaborating With Other Systems to Assist in Providing Youth With Necessary Resources

It is clear to the officers that a young person’s ability to lead a nondeviant life depends not only on his or her mind-set but also on his or her material and social circumstances. As Burnett (2010) noted, an attitude of hope is insufficient in bringing about desistance among offenders who lack the “means or opportunities to change their material circumstances” (Burnett, 2010, p. 665). Youth need the practical means to turn their lives around in addition to the hope that comes from believing that change is possible. The social and material misfortunes that many of the youth had experienced were not lost on their probation officers. Indeed, it is the awareness of the adverse life circumstances that prompted the officers to adopt attitudes of sympathy and empathy when interacting with the youth:

So it was difficult for him . . . especially . . . I guess the most discouraging factor was the fact that they didn’t have a place to live and there was no primary phone number to like set up an appointment with them, you know, with the outside agencies. So that was a huge challenge, to try and get him the resources he needed.

Another officer mentioned that she had few success stories because “some youth can’t escape their environment.” As part of their roles as support figures in the youth’s lives, the officers take on the responsibility of referring youth to outside agencies and organizations that are designed to meet the youth’s specific social, psychological, and material needs. When asked about the most challenging aspect of their jobs, the officers often mentioned collaborating with these other agencies and institutions, which include schools, housing assistance agencies, counseling clinics, and so on:

Making referrals to community agencies . . . particularly when I’m working with youth with mental health challenges . . . it’s so difficult to find. There are resources out there, but not enough. By the time the space becomes available, their probation is done.

The biggest challenge is all the systems that we have to navigate through, especially being in Toronto, an urban setting—these systems are huge. If I were living in a small town, I would maybe have one or two schools to deal with, whereas in Toronto . . . there are tons of schools . . . so I find that very challenging, just navigating through that.

Although the officers do not often directly intervene in attempts to alleviate the youth’s social and psychological hardships, therefore, they support the youth by collaborating with the different institutions that are intended to support young persons. In this way, they go beyond simply motivating the youth to accept change; they assist in providing the youth with the resources they need to attain the means necessary to implement the change as well.

Encouraging the Youth to Take Control of Their Lives

A lot of the youth don’t have the sense of control in their own lives. So I try to encourage them to um to be invested in themselves, to regain control or become responsible. Because I can’t live their lives for them, so what I try to do is help them; I can’t just help them, period—they have to help themselves.

Although all probation officers see it as their professional responsibility to encourage and support the youth in adopting positive changes in their lives, the officers were consistently explicit in their belief that the change ultimately has to come from the youth themselves. A full 85% of the respondents made reference to the belief that no progress could be made if the youth did not want it. Just as the officers avoid using only their authority over the youth to instill positive change, they clearly communicate to the youth that, although they will do their level best to help the youth along the way, whether a nondeviant life is possible ultimately depends on the youth.

This strategy mitigates the extent to which communication between the probation officer and the youth is hindered by the youth’s belief that probation officers work in the same capacity as police officers. By emphasizing their role as supportive figures while making it clear that they cannot force the youth to adopt changes unless the youth want to, the officers aim to let the youth realize the benefits of leading a nondeviant lifestyle on their own terms. In the same vein, officers consistently underlined the benefits of letting the youth control minor details in their interaction with the officers:

And I think that’s what they’re looking for—someone who can give them some control. I try and give them control of some things. Like even for scheduling appointments, like “okay, you need to come in next week—is there any day that works better for you? What time is good for you?” They want control, so give them control over petty things that don’t affect me, d’you know what I mean? But it’s different for them, because in their mind . . . you’re not being a certain way . . . So just the little things that they’re not used to.

Thus, in addition to all the more subtle ways in which the officers allow the youth to experience a sense of power and control over their lives, they also give the youth this control in the most obvious, direct, and explicit sense. In this way, they convey a sense of respect for the youth and their individuality, and they gain the youth’s trust while defining themselves as someone to help the youth rather than recriminalize them or dictate a way of life to them. Rex (1999) argued that the legitimacy of probation supervisors cannot be considered automatic; rather, “it needs to be exercised in a manner which preserves its legitimacy” (p. 378). By allowing youth to control certain aspects of the probation officer–client relationship, the officers seek to be authoritative rather than authoritarian, thereby legitimizing their role in the eyes of their clients.

The finding that officers encourage their clients to assert control of their lives is also consistent with research in the desistance literature that highlights the agency of offenders. Maruna (2004), for example, noted that although knifing off—a term commonly used in the desistance literature to refer to the process by which offenders distance themselves from harmful environments, undesirable companions, or even the past itself—may occur through structural and environmental changes, it may also be freely chosen by offenders themselves who decide to change on their own. As mentioned, Giordano et al. (2002) have argued that female offenders’ desistance may be best viewed through a symbolic interactionist perspective that emphasizes the actors’ agency in bringing about the cognitive transformations necessary for their adoption of nondeviant lifestyles. The officers’ argument that the ability to adopt positive changes is ultimately in the hands of the youth themselves can be related to what Giordano et al. noted as “arguably the most fundamental” cognitive transformation: the actor’s basic openness to change (p. 999). The officers’ repeated refrain that “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” highlights the importance that the officers place on the youth’s role in their own transition to a nondeviant lifestyle. By emphasizing the agency of their clients, the youth probation officers treat them as rational actors capable of bringing about change in their lives, as Rex (1999) argued is the case among adult probationers as well.

Finally, it is important here to note again that many of the findings in this discussion are related to the officers’ belief that their clients are undergoing a transitional period during which change is possible. Indeed, as mentioned, this belief is what permits them to be hopeful and optimistic in a way that many believe they cannot be about the prospects of adult offenders. Giordano et al. (2002) and Giordano (2010) argued that emphasizing identity and cognitive transformations (as the officers in this study do) is especially important given the transitional life period youth offenders are in. This period has also been emphasized in noncriminological literature, where researchers (Schwartz, Côté, & Arnett, 2005) have argued that emerging adults utilize agentic capacities to varying degrees depending on the coherence of their identity. The officers in this study individualize their interaction with their clients to account for the individual-level differences among their clients, but they emphasize the ability of each youth to assert control in his or her own life during an important transitional stage of their lives.

Discussion

I have described the strategies that youth probation officers in Toronto use to ignite a sense of optimism in the youth that they deal with, as well as guide them through the process of regaining control of their lives and adopting positive changes. Most of the officers’ roles can be categorized into those related to enforcement and those related to support; but walking the line is the biggest challenge for most of the officers, a finding consistent with the literature on youth supervision in other parts of the world (Cross et al., 2002; Trotter, 2006). Although the Netherlands (like Canada) experienced a shift away from a welfare-oriented justice model toward one that emphasizes the rights of youth offenders, researchers (Junger-Tas, 2004; uit Beijerse & van Swaaningen, 2006) have noted that, in practice, welfare and rehabilitation of the youth remains a priority among practitioners in the Netherlands. Similarly, the findings in this article highlight how, despite a shift away from the explicitly welfare-oriented model of the JDA, youth probation officers working under the YCJA continue to focus on the well-being of their clients. By holding the youth accountable for their actions and emphasizing the control that youth can exercise in the details of their relationship with the officers, they hope to ignite a sense of responsibility in the youth. And by simultaneously supporting the youth through the challenges of the probation order specifically and any other life challenges (broadly construed), the officers also attempt to inform their clients of a world of nondeviant possibilities.

Although none of the officers in this study mentioned drawing on a “best practices” theoretical foundation, the findings outlined here emphasize strategies reminiscent of the methods of interaction outlined as being crucial in the development of a positive relationship between probation officers and clients. Indeed, many of the strategies presented underscore the “best practice” literature’s call for a “balanced approach” where probation officers are “firm but fair” and “positive, nurturing, leading, encouraging, [and] empowering” (Walsh, 2001, in Schwalbe & Maschi, 2009, p. 358). They moreover reflect the “evidence-based” practice model that Trotter (2006) laid out, with officers making a point of clarifying their role to their clients, forging a collaborative relationship, and reinforcing prosocial behavior and attitudes. Similarly, although none of the officers remarked on the need to build a therapeutic alliance with their clients, their efforts at building nurturing and close relationships reflects elements of such a relationship based on “motivating offenders to change” (McMurran, 2002).

Although the findings in this study are consistent in some respects with a “nontreatment” approach (Bottoms & McWilliams, 1979) insofar as the officers’ strategies reflected a disavowal of an “officer-centric” approach that objectifies offenders by treating, curing, or managing them (McNeill, 2006), several officers were cognizant of the need to remember the victims of their clients’ crimes, a dimension that scholars have critiqued the nontreatment approach for ignoring (Raynor & Vanstone, 1994). As such, the overall findings of the study more closely resemble Raynor and Vanstone’s (1994) revision of the nontreatment approach, where the officers aim to help offenders in a way that is consistent with reducing overall harm. The findings also indicate that, consistent with Raynor and Vanstone’s version of the nontreatment approach, youth probation officers in Toronto can individualize their interaction with their clients, with collaboratively designed tasks being tailored specifically to meet individual offenders’ needs.

A more recently developed lens to analyze the officers’ methods of interacting with their clients may be found in the desistance literature. Although focused on youth offending, the findings of this study are consistent with Rex’s (1999) study on adult probation officers, because the officers in this study also retained the legalistic and formal nature of their professional responsibilities and simultaneously sustained a sympathetic, optimistic attitude toward their clients. The strategies that the officers use also reflect the desistance paradigm that McNeill (2006) presented insofar as the officers strive to foster agency and control in the youth’s lives, to focus on the youth’s strengths, and to maintain a relationship of respect with the youth.

Most relevant, perhaps, is the literature on the cognitive and narrative transformations that are integral to the process of desistance (Burnett & Maruna, 2004; Giordano et al., 2002; Maruna et al., 2004), and that emphasize “the existential aspects of desistance” that pertain to offenders’ attempts to rebuild, remodel, and remake their own social identities (Farrall & Calverley, 2006, p. 85). The officers in this study argued that their professional responsibilities revolved primarily around supporting their clients’ efforts to desist from crime by encouraging the youth to believe that they are in fact capable of change. As such, many of the strategies described in this study pertain to the officers’ efforts to shape the youth’s attitudes in a way that makes the youth hopeful about and confident in their abilities to lead nondeviant lives. From focusing on the positive elements of their clients’ life histories to letting the youth control elements of their time on probation, the officers aim to instill an attitude of optimism and control in the youth, factors that have been noted as important in the desistance process (Burnett & Maruna, 2004). At the same time, the officers collaborated with other community institutions to assist youth to overcome the disadvantages they face that are rooted in the structural and material conditions of their lives.

The officers in this study did not express a preference for a more eclectic model of justice that avoids prioritizing the goal of rehabilitation over control (Corrado et al., 2010). Rather, by emphasizing the unique and often difficult life circumstances that the youth they interact with are exposed to, the officers underscored the need to offer the youth the support and firm hand they need during their transition to a prosocial life. However, consistent with the eclectic “corporatist” and “modified justice” models described by Corrado et al. (2010), the officers relied on community agency referrals and prioritized procedural fairness as well as proportionality when interacting with their clients. That rehabilitation is the primary goal for them does not, therefore, entail that their job is one dimensional. Rather, the professional responsibilities of the officers in this study are remarkably complex and more similar to the eclectic models described by Corrado et al. (2010), as the officers balance the line between asserting control over the youth’s lives and supporting them.

Conclusion and Future Research

There are limitations to the methodology that this study used: As is often the case in qualitative research that uses nonprobability sampling, generalizability is limited to populations similar to the one studied. Given that the logic and purpose of this qualitative study were not to maximize generalizability but to produce rich data that contribute theoretically and empirically to existing literature on practice in the youth justice system, a nonprobability purposive sample was appropriate. Although future research may explore whether the strategies described here are statistically representative of the Canadian population of youth probation officers, the goal of this study was to construct a detailed account of how a sample of probation officers working under the YCJA perceive their jobs and clients. Moreover, because the sample comprised officers who were trained during different historical periods in the Canadian youth criminal justice system, as well as officers who work in different areas, there is sufficient diversity to capture a fairly wide range of officer perspectives.

This study did not explore how successful any of the strategies discussed are. Although many of the officers interviewed described success stories, most also emphasized that there always will be youth who do not respond well to any of the strategies the officers use. Future research may therefore investigate youth offenders’ responses to the specific ways outlined here that the officers interacted with them. In their study of offenders in a counseling program, Maruna et al. (2004) found that ex-offenders’ desistance was frequently described in terms of how it manifested itself externally or, more specifically, in terms of the reflections of self that the clients perceived. Future research may thus explore, for example, whether the officers’ celebrations of their clients’ each success—no matter how small—contribute to their clients’ self-appraisals in a way that affects their desistance from crime. More relevant to the findings of this study is Burnett and Maruna’s (2004) argument that hope—although it may appear to be a “fuzzy” concept and most helpful when linked to realistic expectations and self-efficacy—is crucial to the desistance process, and that offenders who are optimistic about their abilities to lead prosocial lives are more likely to succeed in their efforts at desistance. Future research should thus delve further into the concept of hope as it relates to youth offenders and their desistance processes, and explore whether the officers’ focus on their clients’ “alternative stories” is helpful in evoking a sense of optimism among their clients about the possibility of changing their lives in a positive manner.

The literature on working with involuntary clients has described how such clients attempt to regain power in an unbalanced relationship with a worker (Rooney, 2009). Researchers in this area can thus also explore whether youth offenders feel that such a power differential is lessened by the officers’ strategy of encouraging the youth to take control of their own lives. Moreover, given that many of the officers in this study viewed their role as primarily supportive, to what extent do their clients rely on them for support and guidance? In her study on probationers and their probation officers, Rex (1999) found that the vast majority of her sample of probationers made reference to the need for their officers to show empathy, understanding, and an ability to listen. Researchers should explore whether youth offenders share these opinions and, if so, whether they believe their probation officers display these traits. Finally, researchers in this area should further explore probation officers’ attitudes toward female clients by investigating the source of the discomfort that many officers voiced about working with young girls. This is especially important because, as Gaarder et al. (2004) noted, such discomfort might suggest the need for stronger gender-specific training.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Candace Kruttschnitt, three anonymous reviewers, and the Editor of International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, George B. Palermo, for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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