This paper discusses juvenile probation officers. In 1999 nearly 1.5 million delinquency cases were handled by juvenile courts. Virtually every one of those cases had contact with a probation officer at some point. Probation departments screened most of those cases to determine how they should be processed, made detention decisions on some of them, prepared investigation reports on most of them, provided supervision to over a half million of them, and delivered aftercare services to many of the juveniles released from institutions. Since probation has been the overwhelming dispositional choice of juvenile and family court judges. The average caseload is 41 juveniles.
