Probation Officers and Parole Officers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Probation Officers and Parole Officers - Essay Example They work towards making sure that they have made the law offenders to live productive and useful lives. Depending on the legal status, the law offender may be on parole or probation. Law offenders who are given probationary sentence might or might not have served jail term in the county jail. Once the offender is released, they are put on parole or probation depending on the record of their offence. Those that have served time in federal or state correctional facility are placed on parole when they are released. Conditions are given to both types of offenders when they are released and a parole or probation officer supervises them for a specified period of time (California Occupational Guide, 1). Probation officers are also known as community supervisors in some states as they supervise people on probation. Practically a probation officer supervises those convicted of violent crimes because probation is granted to those with substantial drug abuse history and criminal background (Ba nks, 165). Probation officers also offer training that includes rational behavior training – it focuses on the officers using rationality principles to persuade a probationer to change his/her attitudes and beliefs. The training influences hostile offenders to develop new behavior and beliefs, which probation officers reinforce. Parole officers usually perform the same duties as probation officers, the only difference being that while parole officers supervise the offenders who have been released from prison, probation officers wok with the offenders in the prison (Labor Dept (U S) Bureau of Labor Statistics, 238). Parole officers are usually in the unit of the youth authority, corrections and the federal department of justice accounts directly to their particular parole boards and their main task is supervising their clients. Before the discharge of an offender, parole officers prepare arrangement and recommendation for their client. Parole officers approve such services as housing, counseling, social activities, employment and education (California Occupational Guide, 3). On the other hand, probation officers are usually at the courts and they execute pre-sentence investigations and organize reports on their clients. They also aid their clients to go back to the free society. They also implement courts order, which may incorporate them to seize evidence, organize for drug testing, make arrests and carry out searches. Parole officers focus their effort on surveillance rather than rehabilitation though their systems are scarce. In urban areas, parole agents are commonly occupied in verifying curfews, drug testing and electric monitoring. Most parolees do not complete their parole supervision and they therefore end up going back to prisons, making the prisons full. The role of parole officers is to have all the legal authority carried out and to use firearms to search without constraint of the forth amendment, order arrest without probable cause and conf ine without bail (Banks, 165). According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), when the probation and the parole officers are running in jail and prisons, they supervise the improvement of the inmates. They may assess the inmates by means of psychological and questionnaires tests. They work directly with other agencies or officers to develop release and parole plans. Their report discusses the record of the inmate and the probability of the inmate committing another crime. This