This report will deal chiefly with adult probation, its present development and status, its needs and future. It will have little to say of suspended sentence, which we regard, when properly used, as merely preliminary to probation or applicable only to trivial offenses. We regard it of far less importance at this time to deal with the legal aspects of this topic than to consider and submit recommendations regarding the practical administration of the probation system. 1. Probation accepted. The term probation properly used covers all the social as distinguished from the legal and judicial work of the courts. It includes the social investigation of defendants as well as the supervision of convicted offenders released under suspended sentence. The time is past when it is necessary to defend the probation system as such. Adverse criticism today (and this has increased in some quarters due to the so-called crime wave) upon analysis is found to be almost wholly due to the inadequate equipment of probation offices, and the consequent laxness of investigation or supervision, or else to the misuse of its principles and functions. Few, if any, innovations in criminal procedure and administration have commanded as much approval, both from the well informed student of criminology and from the general public, as has the establishment and rapid extension of the probation system. It commends itself in theory to all except those ultra-legalistic and reactionary minds who see in the criminal courts only instruments for the conviction and punishment of crime. Humanitarian principles and the development of the social sciences have conspired together to socialize the courts and there can be no turning back. 2. The subject limited. We shall not in this report, however, discuss the theory of probation, but its present practice and tendencies. Granted that the principles behind probation are sound, let us ask ourselves: Is probation work in the courts as developed to date successful and beneficial to