The Probation Career of Al Truism

Abstract

The writing of Bill McWilliams on probation history and practice is briefly reviewed. Bill’s plea for a theoretical moral underpinning for practice would, if answered, make the service less vulnerable to the discrediting of its claims that probation is effective in increasing public protection. These claims are ill‐founded, and are only sustainable because of political and criminological disinclination to address the evidence or live with its consequences. The search for a moral underpinning might have led Bill to link probation with current concerns to combat social exclusion. This would involve detailed consideration of the distributive justice–retributive justice nexus and its implications for probation practice. It is argued that concern altruistically to give help to all those damaged by the criminal justice process, victims, witnesses, perpetrators and their families alike, would accord with a secularised but morally grounded version of the police court mission.

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