Essay on Social Investigation

The third point pertains to social investigation. According to the existing provisions of the Probation Act, it is not mandatory for the courts to send each case for social investigation to the probation officer before releasing an offender on probation. The Act maintains that the courts may call for a report from a probation officer regarding the character of the accused.

Subsection 3 of Section 4 and Subsection 2 of Section 6 provide for court’s taking the probation officer’s report into consideration, if there is any, before it makes an order for release on probation. In this connection, we assert that social investigation in all those cases should be made mandatory where the judges plan to release offenders on probation with or without supervision.

According to the present Probation Act, the probation officer has to report to the court the character and personality of the offender, the circumstances in which the offender is living, his problems and needs, his relationships with people, factors that underlie his specific offences and such other matters as may, in the opinion of the probation officer, require to be taken into consideration by the court before making the probation order.

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This clearly points out the use of the pre-sentence investigation report to determine a treatment plan. The diagnostic report is not to assist the court in assessing whether a person accused of committing crime is to be actually convicted for that crime or not.

This is evident from the fact that probation officer’s sealed report is opened by the magistrate only after the offender is found guilty, to know the character of the offender before making an order of release.

For utilising probation wisely, it is essential for a conscientious judge to have at the time of sentence of the offender complete, accurate, reliable and confidential information on which to base his decision.

For a judge to merely guess whether the offender should be sent to jail or placed on probation with or without supervision is almost as futile as to expect a doctor to prescribe medicine without getting details of the disease from the patient.

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True, there are not enough probation officers and their case-loads are too high. But these arc administrative problems which are not difficult to solve. The argument that the probation officer may not be completely objective and impartial in conducting investigation and in writing the pre-sentence report is irrational and ludicrous because the same argument can be applied to the possibility of non-objectivity of the judges too.

Similarly, the fear that the probation officer may write the report without going to the field and meeting the parents, relatives, neighbours and friends etc., of the offender, merely points out defect in the process of selecting probation officers and not in the validity of the pre-sentence investigation report.

As such, an amendment in Subsection 2 of Section 4 and 6 for compulsory pre-sentence investigation and asking for the probation officer’s recommendation regarding probation or commitment is necessary and highly desirable and should be regarded as an ideal measure.