Probation and Parole

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Probation and Parole

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Their Differences, Their Rules and Their Goals |

Joyce Allman

11/28/2011

Introduction to Criminal HistoryCJ1101David Horiuchi |

Probation and Parole

Their differences, Their Rules, and Their Goals

The dawning of the 14th century shows that English courts had established the practice of “binding over for good behavior”, in which the offender could be entrusted to the custody of willing citizens. John Augustus (1784-1859) is generally recognized as the world’s first probation officer. Mr. Augustus, a Boston shoemaker, attended sessions of criminal court in the 1850’s and offered to take carefully selected offenders into his home as an alternative to imprisonment. In the beginning he supervised drunkards only; by 1857 Mr. Augustus was supervising many different types of offenders, and devoted all of his time to the service of the court system. When Mr. Augustus died in 1859 he had supervised over 200 criminals. In 1878, the Massachusetts legislature enacted a statute that authorized the city of Boston to hire a paid probation officer. Missouri followed suit in 1897, along with Vermont in 1898 and Rhode Island in 1899. Before the end of the nineteenth century, probation had become an accepted and widely used form of community-based-supervision. By 1925, all 48 states had adopted probation legislation. In that same year, the federal government enacted legislation enabling federal district court judges to appoint salaried probation officers and to impose probation terms.

Probation is just one aspect of community corrections, it is a sentence served while under the supervision of an officer of the court system and while still living in the community. The goal of being placed on probation is for the court system to retain some control over the criminal offender while using community programs to help rehabilitate them and to give the criminal offender a second chance to change their way of thinking and/or acting. This will also...