National Overviews

Broadly speaking, probation supervision of court-involved juveniles tends to be the administrative responsibility of state executive agencies. That is the organizational and administrative model that is most often encountered. But alternative models--local judicial and state judicial administration--are also quite common.

State executive agencies control the delivery of all probation services in 12 states. Such agencies also have responsibility for probation in at least some parts of 11 other states. Most often, the agency controlling the provision of probation services in some or all of a state is a separate juvenile corrections agency (9 states). But social or human services agencies wield authority over probation in 4 states, child protection agencies in 6 states, and adult corrections agencies in 4 states.

In 9 states, probation is administered by local juvenile courts. In 15 other states, probation is controlled by local courts in at least some parts of the state--in urban but not rural areas, for example. The most common arrangement (9 states) is for a state-level executive agency to exercise administrative responsibility over some probation in the state.

The administration of probation services by a state-level judicial agency--the administrative office of the courts, for example--is the next most commonly encountered model (10 states).

The most rarely encountered organizational and administrative arrangement is one in which local executive agencies control the provision of probation services. Local executive agencies administer all probation in only 1 state (New York). In 5 other states, local executive agencies are responsible for probation in some areas, while local courts run probation in others. In 1 state, a local executive agency shares responsibility for probation with a state executive agency.

Citation: Griffin, Patrick and King, Melanie. 2006. "National Overviews." State Juvenile Justice Profiles. Pittsburgh, PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice. Online. Available: http://www.ncjj.org/stateprofiles/.