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Technology and the future of community penalties

Mair, George
June 4, 2015

Source: (2001) In Community penalties: Change and challenges, eds. Anthony Bottoms, Loraine Gelsthorpe, and Sue Rex, 168-182. Cambridge Criminal Justice Series. Devon, UK: Willan Publishing.

Many changes have occurred in the last two decades that affect the work of the Probation Service in the United Kingdom, yet Mair believes that fundamentally probation officers still work with offenders in the same ways. However, he also argues that two new technologies have the potential for profound implications for community penalties and probation officers, if only in symbolic terms. These technologies are electric monitoring and computerization (e.g., to calculate risk assessment of offenders). In this chapter, then, Mair examines the introduction of electronic monitoring and computerization in relation to probation work, and he speculates on the future of the Probation Service and technological developments.

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