This article explores the experience of offenders while under probation supervision and analyses the "pains of probation" in connection to rehabilitation aspirations. The article has two main parts. In the first part of the article, the experiences of probationers are examined using thematic analysis, and eight different pains of probation are identified. In the second part of the article, these pains of probation are examined from two different perspectives: human rights and the Good Lives Model. The conclusion is that these two perspectives support each other and can help reduce the frustrations and deprivations experienced by individuals on probation. By implementing these two perspectives, probation services may overcome the obstacles toward desistance and earn more legitimacy in the eyes of probation recipients.

Based on an ethnographic study with 58 participants released from a Romanian prison, this study revisits the pains of release and illustrates the complexity of the reentry process. Some of the pains of reentry seem universal while others seem to be context dependent. In the same time, some pains of release are personal, others social, while others are structural. Concepts of intersectionality and the multi-level model of reentry are discussed, and further suggestions for research are advanced.

This article is based on an ethnographic study involving 58 Roma and Romanian participants who were released from Jilava Prion in Romania between January and July 2015. The methodology involved interviews, observation, questionnaires, and photovoice. The findings seem to suggest that most of the factors associated with desistance and reentry in the literature are relevant to the ex-prisoner's experiences. The main contribution of this article is the observation that these factors come into play at different times and in different stages of the reentry process. Five reentry stages were identified in this study: prerelease-anticipation, recovery and reunion, activation, consolidation, and relapse. The aim of the article is to describe this reentry process as the participants experienced it. Theoretical and practice implications are discussed.

This article explores what the existing literature has to say about what is most important in the probation supervision: staff characteristics, staff skills or programmes? In broader historical perspective, the story begins in a time when the probation officer was cast as 'a man of God … full of the milk of human kindness' (Jarvis, 1972: 8) and arrives in the present day when the probation officer looks like 'homo technicus'; equipped to deliver sophisticated programmes. One important observation of this critical historical analysis is that although they were considered essential in the early days, the centrality of staff characteristics faded from view in the years after professionalization. At the same time staff skills and programmes came to be seen as more and crucial in probation supervision. A possible explanation of these developments is that the quest for professionalization increased the pressure on probation practice to gain public recognition, and that this was pursued through the imperative of objectification (Kaufmann, 1998 [1996]) which forces all sciences to use observable tools. Another explanation of the disappearance of probation characteristics in the literature could be that the current mainstream research methodologies are not fully capable of capturing the complexities of the human and social worlds in which supervision takes place. By using Cohen's (1985) and Garland's (2001) work, it also provided a possible framework for understanding this dynamic within a broader crime control perspective. At the end of the article the author suggests some ideas that could be explored in future research.

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