Pitfalls and Prospects in Partnership - Article Example

This essay will explain and analyze the pitfalls and prospects in Partnership in Probation Programmes for substance misusing offenders. Based on researches crimes are usually committed by those who are under the influence of drugs. The article of Judith Rumgay and Sharon Cowan has presented the effectivity of partnership in the probation programmes. If the probation service is to play significant roles in working with problem drug users, this will inevitably involve more partnership work with drug services.

The aim of the article is to present the Pitfalls and prospects in partnership in probation programme for substance misusing offenders. Impact on inter-agency relationships is beginning. Home office directions to probation services are forging financial partnerships with voluntary sector organisations. For the past ten years the probation services has been increasingly working in conjunction with other agencies. The probation services are being pressured to work with criminally involved problem drug users.

The Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD, 1991) made specific recommendations about probation service delivery. In addition, the 1991 Criminal Justice Act revised the statutory provision for the treatment of drug- (and alcohol-) misusing offenders within a probation order. The authors report on an ongoing study of partnerships between probation services and substance misuse agencies in England and Wales. Rumgay and Cowan compare the expectations of partnership as revealed in policy and management perspectives with the experience of probation officers and drug/alcohol workers involved in projects at practice level.

The authors compare the expectations of partnership as revealed in policy and management perspective with the experience of probation officers and drug/alcohol workers involved in projects at practice level. The following differences between successful and problematic partnerships are explored and the question is asked as to how far inter-agency relationships are influenced by the additional factor of financial contracts for the services of voluntary agencies. Statutory and Voluntary agency partnerships in community supervision of offenders are considered with particular reference to issues in compulsion and enforcement.

Discussion The involvement of private and public sector in the development of a new probation services is important. The probation service supports and monitors offenders in the community, oversees the implementation of Community Sentences, administers a range of Offender Behaviour Programmes and provides a service to the courts where pre sentence reports are required. It works in partnership with Prison Service, the Police, the Drugs Intervention Programme and the Youth Offending Team and at a strategic level with the local authority and other NGO's.

The article provides information on how the service is being rendered to the offender. NGO group such as the staff of voluntary sector housing providers and employment and training agencies are embedded at a local level and there are established links with services specialising in mental health and alcohol. The aim to reduce