Federal Probation
& Pretrial Officers
Association
Organization History
While the present association was established in 1955, the value
of such an organization was expressed as early as April 21, 1936 in
a letter to all officers from Richard E. McSweeney, Chief U.S.
Probation Officer for the District of Massachusetts. The real effort
to organize, however, came in 1948 when a committee was formed to
study the establishment of a national association. Later, at a
regional training institute in 1951 in Madison, Wisconsin, the
officers in attendance accepted the earlier committee report and
constituted themselves as a Federal Probation Officers Association.
Within the next three years, the officers in the remaining four
regions ratified the proposed constitution and, in 1954, the first
national officers were elected: Richard F. Doyle, ED/MI, President;
Claude Goza, ND/GA, Vice-President; and Arch Saylor, SD/NY,
Secretary-Treasurer. The Executive Board was completed by the
selection of five regional representatives. On February 4, 1955 the
first board meeting was held at Lexington, Kentucky.
From the outset, the Association has been a major influence in the
growth and direction of the Federal Probation and Pretrial Services
System. During its early years, the Association contributed to the
establishment of an improved, standardized salary plan, influenced a
needed increase in the number of officers and served a major
function in assuring qualification of officers for hazardous duty
retirement. With reorganization, a sixth regional representative
joined the board. In order to assure the flow of vital communication
with members, the Newsletter Editor became an ex-officio member to
report directly to members on the board's activities. During the
ensuing years, the original constitution was amended on several
occasions, and through this process, the Association became a
not-for-profit corporation, expanded membership to include pretrial
services officers, probation officer assistants and pretrial
services officers assistants. More recently, the name of the
organization was changed to The Federal Probation & Pretrial
Officers Association.
The accomplishments of the FPPOA have been many. For example, in
cooperation with a private university, it researched and published a
compilation of felony registration statutes among the various
states. In cooperation with the Federal Judicial Center, it
developed and published a guide to public relations for officers.
More recently, the FPPOA completed a pay comparability study for the
purpose of upgrading the journeyman grade, researched and submitted
to the Judicial Conference a retirement study and the anticipated
impact on staffing in the nineties, and completed a study on serious
assaults against officers on the state and federal levels.
Today, the Association provides national leadership in the
professional growth of probation and pretrial services. Working
closely with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the
Federal Judicial Center, the Bureau of Prisons, the Sentencing
Commission and the Parole Commission, the FPPOA continues to promote
professionalism within the federal criminal justice system.
