Building Probation Capacity: What Works? Learning from the European experience of Probation Service Development in the 21st Century
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Respected 'supranational' bodies such as the United Nations (UN) and Council of Europe (CoE) encourage and promote community sanctions and measures through the promulgation of international standards instruments, such as the UN's (1990) Standard Minimum Rules for Noncustodial Measures (the Tokyo Rules) and the European Probation Rules (2010) respectively.Such standards, by their nature, are relatively uncontested in terms of their acceptance by relevant authorities and their applicability in the development and operation of probation services and organisations.The authors of Building Probation Capacity: What Works? (Pitts and Tigges, 2023; p.31) however, have justifiably "…observed that these [international standards instruments] do not address the process of 'getting there'" and that "furthermore, there exists no clear analytical or development framework for probation capacity building and no comprehensive studies have been conducted to discern different approaches and their effectiveness."In essence, while it is clear that the UN and CoE, for example, hold up their respective standards for implementation by Member States, that is not accompanied by a similar clarity in advice on how to achieve those standards, in organisational terms, in practice.And that is especially true when any jurisdiction seeks to set about developing a probation system and requires the necessary 'capacity' to do that 'from scratch.'
Source: Probation Quarterly
DOI: 10.54006/epye4928
Author: Vivian Geiran
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4404300829