‘Probation Officer’ Archives
Good Casework, or just Dumb Luck?
Dear Probation Officer, Our son was on probation for a while and we really had our ups and downs with him. The probation officer was very attentive, and our son eventually straightened up, but we’re not sure exactly what brought him around. We’ve talked about it a lot and we don’t see where anybody did anything miraculous. Was it just dumb [...]
The One Thing I’ve Learned
I was once asked to describe, in a nutshell, what I had learned from being a probation officer. I couldn’t, at the time, give a concise answer, but now I know what I would say. After close to forty years of working with offenders, trying to assist, coerce, reason and punish them into rehabilitation, I am convinced of one [...]
The Push-Pull of Teaching Faith
A distraught mother called me one day to ask for advice regarding her teenage daughter. She said the girl was rebelling, mostly over the church they attended, and added, “We can’t get her to come around to our way of thinking, and last week she even ran away for two days.” In trying to explain the family dynamics, she [...]
