The Engineer,the Educationalist,and the Feminist Writer: National Champions and the Development of Probation in Europe

Probation developed throughout the world as a result of a variety of different elements and social conditions coinciding within a relatively short period of time at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century. Amongst these were the efforts of a number of people from different disciplines who shared an interest in giving people who were at the beginning of their criminal careers a second chance. This paper highlights the contributions of three of these people in an attempt to throw more light on how the concept of probation passed into law, how it attracted disparate interests in Europe, and what that reveals about the state of probation today.