The Roles and Challenges of Parole Officers in Reintegrating Prisoners into the Community under the Parole System

The recently introduced parole system in Malaysia aims at rehabilitating and ensuring prisoner's successful reintegration into the community. In discharging their statutory duties, the parole officers are subjected to two essential functions of rehabilitating and surveillance of the prisoners. Drawn from an ongoing doctoral study, this paper focuses on examining the roles of parole officers and their various challenges in implementing the system, This paper reveals that the dual roles of parole officers pose legal and operational dilemmas in performing their statutory duties, resulting in the tenuous balance between the surveillance and the rehabilitation roles of parole officers in reintegrating prisoners into the community.