SUMMARY Change has heightened contradictions inherent in the probation service's functions. The effects of this on officers' behaviour are described and a new conceptualization of the relationship between care and control is offered. It is argued that models of possible future developments for the service must address the impact of work function and work context on practice, and an example of an alternative approach to the future is provided. The changes which have taken place in the probation service and its functions since the mid-1960s have been both considerable and well-cata logued.1 It has doubled in size,2 assumed increasing responsibility for the post-custodial supervision of young adults on licence3 and parolees, been involved in the development of alternatives to custody and been increas ingly staffed by generically trained social workers.4 Meanwhile, the heart of its craft, the supervisory relationship, has sustained repeated attacks for its failure to reduce recidivism.5 But these changes and attacks have occurred piecemeal rather than as a grand coup, and their cumulative significance may yet be partially unappreciated. The new functions have propelled the service to the centre of penal policy, but in spite of a number of radical and creative local innovations the service has yet to adjust to its changing role by developing a new range of concepts and practices. It has yet to take stock of its new position. I shall suggest in this article, however, that modifications of this order— those which can be made within the service—can only go part of the way towards adjusting to a changing role. I shall argue that the changes have highlighted to an increasingly intolerable degree contradictions which already existed in the service's functions. To this extent, the service's capacity to meet new challenges is bounded not primarily by such factors as 'skills', 'training' or 'integrating theory and practice' but by the structural context within which it operates and its functions within that context. This is not, of course, to deny the importance of the quality of work done, but