Resources vital to new act, says probation man

Press, 5 December 1985, Page 28

Resources vital to new act, says probation man

PA Dunedin The Criminal Justice Act would “go off in a half-fired manner” without the resources to back it, according to the head of Dunedin’s struggling probation service, Mr W. F. Duell. The Dunedin probation office is struggling to meet the demands of the two-month-old act with too few staff to cover the workload, Mr Duell said.

“We are running into difficulties trying to meet the time constraints. The constraints are quite reasonable. It is just that we don’t have the staff at the present time to meet all the demands.” Mr Duell said that an offender should now expect

to have a probation report prepared in three weeks. “But what we are having to do in some cases is go back to the court and ask them for more time. It’s not totally satisfactory.. “I think the Criminal Justice Act has got some very effective elements in it but I tMnk these productive elements require a lot of time and effort by probation staff,” Mr Duell said. “I think, like anything new, it needs to be resourced properly. Otherwise, it may in the future seem not to have worked — seen as a good idea but not come off.” Before the act was intro-

duced, probation threatened industrial action to gain sufficient staff for it;, he said. The Dunedin office? gained an extra' person but more were needed. Mr Duell said his staff refused to let. the pressure interfere with the quality of their reports, but it restrained the service from fostering the community support needed for some of the sentences introduced in the act. -.? : ? “We need to get out there and create interest, If we are stuck behind a desk writing reports all day, our ability to enthuse and develop community support is limited.” j