Probation Work

Probation Work : Introduction

This section will outline the main areas of our work with offenders. It provides details for people who work with probation services, such as magistrates, court staff and voluntary and partner agencies.

The new community sentence

The way the criminal justice system works has changed. This is because of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (CJA 2003) which came into force in April 2005.

One of the major changes has been to the sentencing options available to Magistrates' and Crown Courts. Some sentences disappeared, for example, community rehabilitation order, community punishment order and drug treatment and testing order. These were replaced by one generic community order with a range of requirements.

The aim of the Act is to reduce crime and reoffending by modernising the Criminal Justice System from end to end - from arrest, to prosecution to effective sentencing action by courts and rehabilitation of offenders. The intention is to provide tough, effective sentences designed to reduce offending and introduce measures to enable successful rehabilitation and to protect the public.

For the 42 Areas in the National Probation Service the Act has brought radical changes to the way we work. We now manage offenders in a different way to the way we did before.

  
Download a copy of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. 

Find out more information about the Probation Service by visiting The Home Office or the Ministry of Justice websites.