Probation Officers

Key Responsibilities

• Discuss with offenders how such issues as drug and alcohol abuse and anger management problems might have played roles in their criminal behavior.
• Interview probationers and parolees regularly to evaluate their progress in accomplishing goals and maintaining the terms specified in their probation contracts and rehabilitation plans.
• Investigate alleged parole violations, using interviews, surveillance, and search and seizure.
• Develop liaisons and networks with other parole officers, community agencies, correctional institutions, psychiatric facilities, and aftercare agencies to plan for helping offenders with life adjustments.
• Supervise people on community-based sentences, such as electronically monitored home detention, and provide field supervision of probationers by conducting curfew checks or visits to home, work, or school.
• Identify and approve work placements for offenders with community service sentences.
• Arrange for postrelease services, such as employment, housing, counseling, education, and social activities.
• Prepare and maintain case folder for each assigned inmate or offender.
• Provide offenders or inmates with assistance in matters concerning detainers, sentences in other jurisdictions, writs, and applications for social assistance.
• Conduct prehearing and presentencing investigations and testify in court regarding offenders' backgrounds and recommended sentences and sentencing conditions.
• Administer drug and alcohol tests, including random drug screens of offenders, to verify compliance with substance abuse treatment programs.
• Arrange for medical, mental health, or substance abuse treatment services according to individual needs or court orders.
• Inform offenders or inmates of requirements of conditional release, such as office visits, restitution payments, or educational and employment stipulations.
• Recommend remedial action or initiate court action in response to noncompliance with terms of probation or parole.
• Develop and prepare packets containing information about social service agencies, assistance organizations, and programs that might be useful for inmates or offenders.
• Develop rehabilitation programs for assigned offenders or inmates, establishing rules of conduct, goals, and objectives.
• Recommend appropriate penitentiary for initial placement of an offender.
• Gather information about offenders' backgrounds by talking to offenders, their families and friends, and other people who have relevant information.
• Write reports describing offenders' progress.
• Participate in decisions about whether cases should go before courts and which court should hear them.
• Assess the suitability of penitentiary inmates for release under parole and statutory release programs and submit recommendations to parole boards.