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12 Month Supervision Order - What does this mean

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knock4six | 22:50 Mon 16th Feb 2009 | Law
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Hi
I have just been given a 80 hour community service order and a 12 month supervision order because I smacked my out of control 14 year old daughter with a slipper. Apparently it is classed as a weapon! My ex-wife reported it and I was arrested and had to attend court on an ABH charge. Never had any trouble with the law before so was given the community service order and a 12 month supervision order. I would like to know what the supervision order will mean for me. I attended a probation office tonight and the Probation Officer is a righteous manhater who takes great pleasure in telling me I will have to see her over the 12 month period. I have two questions. The first is do I have to attend the probation office every week for 12 months which if so i do not understand and secondly if i have to keep going to this probation office can i request to change this probation officer as she really is a bitch and i would have rather had a prison sentence than have to endure her attitude towards me every week for 12 months. Thanks
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oh, spotted! red, where are you??!
Question Author
What?
Supervision orders used to require offenders to see their probation officer on a weekly basis initially but monthly thereafter. However the Home Office have tightened the rules and many offenders now have to visit the probation office on a weekly basis throughout the whole of the supervision period. (That seems to have more to do with politicians bowing to pressure from the media - especially from the dreaded Daily Mail - to 'improve' supervision, rather than actually increasing the effectiveness of the system). So it seems likely that you'll have to attend weekly for the full year.

Probation officers are paid to adopt a 'challenging' stance when talking to offenders about the attitudes and behaviour which brought them before the courts. There's nothing to stop you requesting a transfer to another officer but your request is likely to be rejected because it would be seen as trying to avoid the issues which your current probation officer wants you to address.

However, from the little I've learn about the system from people on both sides of the fence (i.e. from both offenders and probation officers I've known) it seems that staffing constraints (plus the constant demands upon probation officers to attend yet more courses) means that case workers are frequently changed, so you might well find you're allocated to a different officer quite soon anyway.

Chris
Question Author
Ok thanks Chris
The probation officer will have dealt with many fathers, (and mothers) who have beaten their children. A male officer would act just the same. And can you blame them?
In fact the majority of society would look upon what you did to your daughter as abuse, so you are now a pariah.
Children are precious and vulnerable and nothing they do deserves smacking, or any other form of abuse.
Hi,
I appreciate that you seem to be very emotional at the moment. However:

1. I have no sympathy for you for injuring your daughter to the extent that you were convicted of ABH - that must have been some whacking you gave her with that slipper!
2. I have loads of sympathy, however, for the fact that you were driven to take such drastic action, I know what it is to have to deal with insolent teenagers!
3. It seems as though you're very "bitter and twisted" about how things have turned out, given that you say you have no previous convictions. I sympathise with your punishment in the sense that I know of many people who have been persistent offenders for many years and are still walking the streets!
4. Unfortunately, it is definitely in your interests, no matter how much you may loathe your probation officer, to attend the appointments faithfully and promptly. To default would only give her the opportunity to have you put back in front of the Court which would be likely to take a dim view of your non-compliance and hammer you even harder.
5. I know that 12 months seems like a long time, and that the 80 hours community service may be hard to bear, but at least you still have your freedom. Make sure that you don't do anything further to jeopardise that.
Question Author
If I wanted Internet judges I would of asked. I wanted facts and details. In this PC world it seems that we no longer can chastis a child in the same way I was and most people I know when we were young. Respect has dissapeared and we ask ourselves why has our society started to breed a culture that sees adults beaten and stabbed to death because a gang has been asked to be quiet at night or 14 year old stabbings at school over a playground argument. We have become a soft nanny nation and heading towards the same way the USA is. My daughter was 14 out of control and was warned she faced a smack but told me to F... Off. In my eyes she crossed the line and I had to restore some dissapline and respect. It was not a hell of a 'beating' it was controlled but stung to shock her. It was the first time she had been given a smack with a slipper and probably long overdue. I now have a daughter who believes she can do what she wants with no consequences and the law is on her side. My next post will probably have the question title 'My daughter is 15 and convicted of drugs please help' she has already threatened a teacher and parents of other children have contacted me to ask that my daughter leaves their children alone. I never intended to miss any meetings with the probation office I just wanted advice on what it involved but thankyou for your righteous attempts to lay your own opinions on this post. Maybe you should become a a probation officer if you not already. I wonder if these people have ever had children themselves
I was given the cane at school when I was 14, 15, and 16. Granted that was a long time ago in the .... er ... er.....early 90's. Believe it or not my parents even smacked me with a belt if I misbehaved - shock horror. What's the world coming to when a father can't even lay a slipper on the backside of a 14 year old to pull them back into line.
Paraffin - you can get done for assault for just pushing a person so you really wouldn't have to hit somebody hard with a slipper to get done with ABH.

A 14 year old child will be very quick to exaggerate how hard something was or how much it hurt just like an ex partner may be inclined to do, with that and the nanny state we live in then community service and supervision order seems quite a good outcome

stick with the weekly meetings as laborious as they may be, they will soon become monthly and at the end of the day the only other option is to go back to court and let the magistrates deal with you again
knock4six , you don't need internet judges and you didn't ask for them. You've had the real thing, in the form of, I assume, magistrates.Now you know what that entails. That you feel you'd rather have a prison sentence than the ' bitch' is wholly understandable. Unfortunately that , current, emotion, might not help you a lot! You never know, you might find out what a prison sentence is unless you 'bite the bullet'!You've finished second once, and that must feel like once too many ,as it is!
Question Author
Will obviously stick with supervision order and get through this but its sad to think that at the end of the supervision order imposed on me I know I will still feel I did not break any laws that I have been brought upto respect. I also received the cane at school and a couple of whacks from my dad when he got home after my mother debriefed him on my bad behaviour. It hurt of course and I received bruises from the cane from school but boy did I know the lines I could not cross without serious repercussions. I would never tell my mother or father to f off without expecting a sore backside for a week! It just makes a mockery when you think that an instituition such has Schools and there headmasters would now be hauled up infront of a court for disciplining children in the same way that they did 20 years ago. Can we say society has improved since these nanny laws came into effect (which I did not know ever did). I don't think so. Of course I like any normal parent is sickened when I hear of child abuse stories by inadaquate parents but chastisement is not abuse. If your religious you will even acknowledge a verse in the bible which warns "Spare the rod and spoil the child". Now I feel this should not be taken literally but its statement from all those thousands of years ago warns that if we are soft with our children we will spoil them to grow up with no morals or boundries and respect for society and our elders will be lost.
The Children Act 2004 s58 provides that , in relation to an offence under s18 ( wounding/gbh with intent to do gbh), s20 ( wounding or gbh) or s47 (abh) of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, battery of a child cannot be justified on the ground it constituted reasonable chastisement.

Corporal punishment in schools was de facto made illegal by that and by the Education Act 1996

(Corporal punishment in prisons was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act 1967)

So there we are.

knock4six, you've got me all wrong, mate. I wasn't trying to be an "internet judge" - after all ,YOU chose to put all those details in your initial message - it's therefore not surprising that other folk will make comment - but I think that you need to be fair about it - as I said, I have loads of sympathy for why you took such drastic action because, you used the word "controlled" to describe how you beat her with the slipper and justified your actions because she had told you to eff off - but, unfortunately for you, you must have caused sufficient injury IN THE EYES OF THE COURT to have inflicted "actual bodily harm" to her - that's not MY opinion, it's what you yourself said you had done, quote "I was arrested and had to attend court on an ABH charge".
I feel extremely sorry for you that you were driven to take such action but it's not the likes of me who has decided that you were guilty, it was the criminal justice system!
You're obviously still very angry and probably feel outraged that you should be treated in the way you have, but you may, or may not, feel different in the future when the dust has settled and you can perhaps look back on the whole incident more objectively.
And to "danchip" I'd say this: I worked for years in the CJS and believe me, you WOULD have to go to some lengths to inflict ABH instead of a lesser count such as common assault - just ask any solicitor or Police Officer!
Hi What you could do is fight back in a extreme way and pack up your daughters stuff and drop her off at children's services and let them deal with her! It's a practice many parents with severely disabled children are forced to do!

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