title: Recalling the past: probation officers work with drug misusers during the 1960s.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Britain's first wave of non-therapeutic drug users during the 1960s were more likely to come into contact with the criminal courts than previous, therapeutic, drug users. This paper recounts the untold history of probation officers' work with drug misusing offenders in the United Kingdom during the 1960s.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using 'snowballing' to source participants (in which study subjects recruit future subjects from among their acquaintances) and in-depth interviews as a means of eliciting information, probation officers who had supervised drug users during this time were interviewed about their experiences. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and a thematic data set produced.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Front-line probation officers in the United Kingdom in the 1960s had considerable contact with drug-misusing offenders. In explaining drug addiction, officers tended to draw upon a psychotherapeutic interpretation, and in terms of intervention they relied heavily upon the psychiatric services to deliver treatment. Probation officers did not always make the connection between addiction and an increase in criminality.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In Britain's first wave of non-therapeutic drug users in the 1960s, probation officers appear not to have made a connection with criminality, which may have limited how far they developed a formalized approach to applying the expertise of the Probation Service.
authors.affiliation: University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sparrow
mesh_terms: D055030:Drug Users / Q000266:history* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall; D000068217:Social Workers / Q000266:history* / Q000523:psychology; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: Addiction history; drug misuse history; drug misusing offenders; probation history; probation officers; probation practice