Probation and its role in the criminal justice system

• Author: Mihaela Tomita
• Position: West University, Timisoara
• Pages: 299-303

PROBATION AND ITS ROLE IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

PhD Senior lecturer Mihaela Tomiţă

West University, Timişoara

Abstract: This paper treats the crucial role that probation has in the criminal justice

system, both in terms of crime reduction as a whole, and the appropriate treatment applied to

criminal offenders.

Probation represents a revalorization of the punishment because it doesn’t have in view

only the delinquent, but also the victim trying to restore the order existed before the crime.

The juridical promotion and regulation of probation was made step by step, under the

impact of a complex of processes and changes that interfered in the sphere of law and criminal

justice.

Key words: socialization process, criminal justice system, probation, re-socialization

Treating and preventing infractionality involves directly responsibilities at all social levels,

having in view the fact that poverty, the economical and social crisis do not generate from

themselves these kind of phenomena, criminality having a much more complex etiology, and it’s

prophylaxis presumes the cooperation of all entities that have contact with this phenomena (from

state institutions to NGO’s).

In this period, there appeared and structured new fundaments with the potential in favour for the

infractionality phenomena.

The uncontrolled explosion of the source of information which instead of contributing to the

diminution of the phenomena did nothing else but becoming motivational vehicles for the

proliferation of delinquent acts.

In this context, there impose a series of socio-juridical modalities of control and diminution of the

negative impact of the mentioned factors from the perspective of the sanctionary treatment, with the

accent put on the alternative punishment.

An important method of reducing relapse is diversion to other penal sanction instead of the

punishment with jail.

The role of the socio-economical factors must be treated with much attention when we talk

about the delinquency phenomena knowing the fact that the economical basis determines the social,

political, cultural, institutional structure that is why the economical situation of a stat or of a small

area determines some human behaviours including criminal one. On the other side the socio-cultural

factors have a predominant roll in the positive or negative socialization of people and in the end

they lead them to committing crimes. As well, we can show that there is social tolerance towards

the deviant behaviour, latent or manifest, with the condition that these behaviours do not affect the

wellbeing of the society.

1

The approach of delinquency on the coordinates of the normal binomial – pathologically we

find it in the specialty literature

2

where the criminal behaviour is seen as a result of the psychical

abnormality, or as a result of a form of perfectly normal behaviour, but it can not be compatible

with the standards of normality of the cultural group or context.

3

The social and juridical laws indicate what is fair on unfair, moral or immoral, legal or

illegal, licit or illicit, etc. establishing the area in which the action or the behaviour of the

individuals is permitted. Because the specifically and general features of the offences and crimes

are evaluated within the penal law, there are differences from a juridical system to another,

differences that are in connection with the cultural and historical traditions, of the customs and

habits of each society.

1

Ogien A., Sociologia devianţei, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2002;

2

Rădulescu Sorin, Banciu Dan, Sociologia crimei şi criminal ităţii, Editura Şansa, Bucureşti 1996, pag. 20

3

Idem, pag. 21