Authority of probation officers in some foreign countries and issues of application of best practices in the Republic of Kazakhstan

The article considers the powers of probation officers and their functions throughout Kazakhstan, namely powers and functions of bodies carrying out pre-trial, judicial, penitentiary, and post-penitentiary probation. At the same time, a special emphasis of the study was placed on the activities of probation officers at the pre-trial and judicial stages of control. The object of the study and the area of research was the functions related to the participation of probation officers in the pre-trial process, namely the functions and what they include. There were raised several questions such as probation officers’ role in the investigation and observing controlled ones, which functions of the employees of the service are key, and which are secondary. Furthermore, we considered the role-play of the probation officer within the trial, namely, the article considers the officer’s functions, obligations, authority, forms of participation, the main formal features of participation. Moreover, we also considered officers’ personality reports and participation conditions in the trial. Specific attention in the research was given to the study of advanced countries’ experience in the scope of their progressive probation-related background, legislation, and practice. Countries such as the USA and the UK were successful to apply their experience fitting it to the domestic conditions.