Career goals and responsibilities in law enforcement agencies

I wish to pursue a career in the juvenile probation area of law enforcement, as a juvenile probation officer. Mcmahon (2016) defines 'juvenile probation' as a type of juvenile sentence wherein a juvenile lawbreaker is allowed to reside within his/her communities, instead of being sent to a new home or to prison. Numerous reasons may be cited as to why juvenile lawbreakers are allowed such leniency. It is up to the court to decide whether any juvenile offender is entitled to probation or not, as well as the probation terms. Probation as a whole, forms a rather critical area of criminal justice. At times considered a test, probation enables lawbreakers to serve their sentence partially or entirely outside of jail. From the incarceration system's perspective, probation reduces costs incurred by the state, enabling prisons to concentrate on punishing dangerous and vicious criminals. Probation for juveniles in the preferred sentence as imprisonment is considered particularly harmful to children's physical and mental wellbeing. Probation counts among the 'family of instruments', that law enforcers employ for reducing juvenile delinquency levels.

History, Duties and Responsibilities of Juvenile Probation Officers

The 'juvenile probation' sentence, in fact, predates the United States' very first exclusive juvenile court. The state of Massachusetts had officially begun enforcing probation as the dispositional option for juvenile delinquents, by enabling suspended sentences, in the year 1878. Law-breaking children would be let free provided they undertook to not commit offense again in the course of their probation. However, pioneers of juvenile courts cast this type of sentence in a different way -- they intended it to be more than just monitoring; rather it was meant to be a "judicial guardianship" process. The innovation is linked to two major consequences. Firstly, the judge was cast in a new and difficult role as case arbiter as well as in the role of a social service administrator. Secondly, this view of juvenile delinquency led to the creation of the probation officer's position. Originally, these officials were assigned to every aspect of juvenile court activity. During the juvenile court's early years, probation officials worked with delinquent, neglected, dependent youngsters and their family members and, beginning from the year 1911, they started taking up maternal pension cases. The probation division of law enforcement had a very humble beginning, with their preliminary development undertaken without much forethought. Volunteer probation officials' original disposition was to offer common sense and extend a hand of friendship to delinquent kids and their family members. This vision was ultimately replaced by attempts at specializing and professionalizing the domain (Peters).

Furthermore, Peters states that early juvenile probation had two key themes linked to it, one of which was gender's role. Right from the start, probation officer roles were divided into "female" and "male" tasks -- the latter were given a bigger role in dealing with juvenile lawbreakers. The other theme entailed the quest for proper theory, in order to guide juvenile probation. With social workers' acceptance of psychodynamic models and their increasing discomfort with providing services in the correctional context, probation administrators moved away from social work, an area that was deemed by an increasing number of professionals in the field to be unrelated and unimportant to their job.

Why Juvenile Probation?

Newton and Abusaid state that juvenile probation officers have a central part to play in delinquent children's development. Being the chief link between law-breaking kids and juvenile courts, these officers are in charge of making sure the children entrusted to their care comply with court rulings.

According to 'Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention' figures, over 50% of all juvenile court cases end in the offender being granted a probation sentence. Nearly 0.5 million cases tried in juvenile courts in the year 2010 involved child-delinquent probation for a particular duration (Abusaid & Newton, 2014).

Juvenile probation officers do more than merely enforcing the court's wishes. Besides being probation-period supervisors to law-breaking kids, the officers act as friendly confidantes, and occasionally, as de facto parents, who actually lend an ear to the kids' anxieties, problems, needs, and hopes. To me, this career means a chance to play a central role in delinquent children's rehabilitation. The career emphasizes rehabilitation, with the great hope that these kids refrain from repeating their past mistakes. Drug counseling and guidance is offered to youngsters in need of it. The ultimate goal is ensuring the kids have all they require for getting back in the mainstream. Involvement in such efforts implies that I can offer alternatives to incarceration; as correction-centered judicial systems seldom tackle delinquent conduct's underlying causes. An increasing number of juvenile courts are adopting rehabilitative justice systems, with diversionary programs growing in popularity, as scholars in the field prove that these options lead to better positive outcomes. With juvenile courts' growing adoption of treatment-based approaches, the 21st-century probation officer's role is continuously evolving (Abusaid & Newton, 2014).

An effective probation officer has to evaluate individual delinquent children's needs in order to ascertain the best course/option for them. Probation officers with a social work background will be inclined to place greater emphasis on probation's rehabilitative aspects, instead of the disciplinary ones. Of course, this is also dependent on individual juvenile courts and the methods they desire to implement. In brief, I have opted for juvenile probation as a career path as I wish to see these troubled kids being integrated back into society, and ultimately leading the life of a normal kid (Abusaid & Newton, 2014).

Works Cited

Abusaid, Shaddi and Newton, Roger. "The Vital Role of Juvenile Probation Officers." Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, 30 May 2014, http://jjie.org/the-vital-role-of-juvenile-probation-officers/106958/. Accessed 2 September 2016.

McMahon, Mary. What is Juvenile Probation? 28 August 2016, www.ojjdp.gov. Accessed 2 September 2016.

Peters, Clark M. "Social Work and Juvenile Probation: Historical Tensions and Contemporary Convergences." Social Work, Vol 56, Number 4, 2011, 355-365. sw.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/4/355.full.pdf+html. Accessed 2 September 2016.