The Prehearing Juvenile Report: Probation Officers' Conceptions

Abstract

Seventy Minnesota probation officers handling juvenile offend ers were asked to rank each section of the prehearing report according to (1) its relative usefulness to them in arriving at appropriate or accurate recommendations of dispositions, and (2) their anticipation of its use by the court. The findings were re lated to biographical characteristics of the probation officers: age, education, professional journals subscribed to and read, opinions regarding the importance of psychological tests and psychiatric examination, job satisfaction, and amount of workload exclusive ly with juvenile offenders. Since a sizable minority (27.2 per cent) did not show significant agreement between their ranking of the report sections in terms of these two considerations, the differ ences in professional identification between two subgroups of the officers were examined for implications of communication and supervision. The majority group, evidencing significant agree ment in ranking the report sections from the two approaches, tended to have a primary professional identification as a proba tion officer ; the smaller subgroup identified professionally with the wider field of social casework.