Teaching Writing to Probation Officers: Problems, Methods, and Resources
Russell Rutter · College Composition and Communication · 1982
Many people, when they hear the word probation, think first of police officers and prisons. However, the university student who specializes in criminal justice science learns that, to corrections specialists, rehabilitating offenders is at least as important as punishing them--often more so. Indeed, many students are attracted to corrections (and for that matter to other human service professions) because they want to with people. What these students and even some entry-level probation officers are surprised to discover is that about 60 per cent of an officer's time is spent with paperwork, usually processing forms, writing requests for information, and-most important here-generating long reports.' And paperwork in the criminal justice professions is similar in importance and in kind to paperwork in the technical and scientific professions. Probation, like parole, is an alternative to incarceration. Probation officers not only supervise probationers but also help the court to decide whether or not a sentence of probation is warranted in a given case.2 When a person is convicted of a crime, the probation officer is usually asked by the presiding judge to prepare a presentence investigation report (also called a presentence report or, more simply, a PSI), a conspectus of information about the offender's lifestyle, family background, education, work record, and other such pertinent matters.3 When at the sentencing date the judge orders the offender to serve either a prison sentence or a probation sentence, he is assisted in reaching his decision by the probation officer's presentence report. Moreover, the Board of Parole may use that same report later if it is asked to decide whether or not an offender who has been incarcerated should be released from prison on parole.4 A presentence investigation report, like most other reports written on the