New Zealand Probation Service

The New Zealand Probation Service is a branch or service of the New Zealand Corrections Department. Established in 1886, its role is to manage offenders sentenced to community based sentences such as home detention, community detention and intensive supervision. The Service also manages prisoners in the community who have been released on parole and offenders on release conditions at the end of their prison sentence (for up to six months). According to Corrections website, in 2014 the Service was looking after approximately 30,000 offenders in the community. The Probation Officer's role is described as "work(ing) with people on probation to motivate them to make changes in their lives. This may include attending programmes to address violence, alcohol and drug abuse or driving offences."

In the 19th and early 20th century, probation officers were required to "befriend" offenders. As the number of offenders being managed in the community has grown, probation officers have had to become more focused on compliance with the sentence than on assisting offenders with rehabilitation. Corrections says the Probation Service is now more focused on keeping the public safe.

According to Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, the New Zealand Probation Service was formed in 1886. New Zealand pioneered the service long before any other country in the British empire including Great Britain. The legislation establishing probation in New Zealand was introduced by the Hon Joseph Augustus Tole who was Minister of Justice from 1884 to 1887. Tole said at the time: "It is cheaper and safer to reduce crime or to reform criminals than to build gaols". In 1906 The Evening Post (now defunct) described the act setting up probation as "one of the best ever placed on a statute book" and said "those who in 1886 had opposed it as dangerous legislation must now admit that such opinions were erroneous".

In recent years, the role of probation officers has changed considerably. In her "Blameless Babes" speech at Victoria University in 2009, Dame Sian said that "when legislation was enacted in England in 1907, one of the functions of the probation officer was 'to advise, assist and befriend' the offender." She said this principle was endorsed in New Zealand by the 1954 Criminal Justice Act which required probation officers "to assist the social rehabilitation of offenders." However Dame Sian points out that in the 21st century, "the statutory functions of the probation officer contain no explicit reference to advice or assistance, much less to 'befriending'," and she suggests that something has been lost in the process.

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Wikipedia