Restructuring NOMS: Some implications for prisons and probation

When the probation system emerged during the first decade of the 20th century it was slowly grafted onto an expanding criminal justice system which already had well established prisons. Nevertheless for the first time in British penal history it was possible for the courts to impose a Probation Order containing a supervisory element within the community which constituted a clear alternative to punishment and imprisonment. From its legislative foothold in the Probation of Offenders Act 1907, probation supervision stood as a separate entity from a prison system which had been at the heart of Victorian penality throughout the 19th century.