Abstract
M.A.
The pre-sentence evaluation committee was an innovation of the 1980's. It is a multidisciplinary team constituted primarily to assist probation officers with their cases in making relevant recommendations on offenders to the court. The concept of the pre-sentence evaluation committee survives in the provisions of the Probation Services Act No. 116 of 1991, and the Strategic Management Plan of the Department of Welfare and Population Development, Gauteng Province. In effect, it has been discontinued in almost all of the decentralized offices of the Department of Welfare and Population Development within the Gauteng Province. The objective of this study is to determine if the pm-sentence is still relevant to probation officers who are the major stakeholders of the committee and If so what form should the committee assume to meet the needs of probation officers. It therefore falls within the program evaluation genre in terms of its purpose. The study entails a survey of fifteen social workers in the employ of the Department of Welfare and Population Development. The majority of these are dedicated probation officers. Data is captured in using a standardized open-ended interview schedule. A qualitative research design isfollowed using a framework based on the work of Strauss and Corbin (1990). Use is made of the NUD.IST computer based program to deal with the transcripts of the fifteen interviews with departmental social workers. The program assists with the treatment of the data and the establishment of hierarchies of concepts developed during the application of Strauss and Corbin's framework. Conclusions of the study are that probation officers In general recognize that the pre-sentence evaluation committee continues to have relevance in court work. That it has greatest relevance for inexperienced social workers and workers confronted with difficult cases. On the basis of the research recommendations are made for a flexible application of the concept of the pre-sentence evaluation committee and that there are additional alternatives which can be considered in addition to the pre-sentence evaluation committee.