‘Helping, hurting, holding and hands off’: preliminary findings from an oral history of probation client experiences of supervision in Ireland

This paper presents preliminary findings from the ‘Histories of Probation in Ireland’ project which aims to provide an extensive, detailed account of Irish probation practice from the 1960s onwards. The core objective of the paper is to highlight patterns emerging from client participants’ lived reality of probation, which is achieved through the application of an oral history methodology. The paper provides an overview of relevant literature, before outlining the research design and explaining the methodological approach of the project. Findings are presented from interviews with current and former probation clients who experienced probation in the 1980s up to present day. A thematic framework of analysis, ‘helping, hurting, holding, and hands off’, is employed in order to understand the individual and collective voices experiencing probation in Ireland during the timeframe