History In 1841 John Augustus, a shoemaker from Boston, Massachusetts, also known as the "Father of Probation", first began the practice of probation in the criminal justice system . Mr. Augustus persuaded a court judge to release a convicted “common drunkard” into his custody. For three weeks this convict was under the care of Mr. Augustus. Mr. Augustus found him a job and made him sign a pledge to stop drinking. At the end of the third week, the offender accompanied by Mr. Augustus returned to the judge, the judge was so impressed with his appearance and recovery that he waived the prison sentence and ordered him to pay only the court costs. Encouraged by his success, Augustus continued to offer assistance to convicted criminals. Before he died in 1859, Augustus had rescued 2,000 inmates from prison (Shmalleger, 2009). In 1978, the Massachusetts legislature enacted a statute authorizing the city of Boston to hire a probation officer. By 1925, 48 states had implemented probation as a sentence. That same year, the federal government enacted legislation allowing federal district court judges to appoint salary oversight officers and set probationary terms (Shmalleger, 2009). Introduction Today, probation is the most common type of sentence in the state of Georgia. There are currently more than 150,000 people on supervised probation in the state of Georgia. In January 2014 I was given the opportunity to join the Clarke County Probation Agency in Athens. The Athens Clarke County Probation Agency was established on July 1, 2008, at the request of the Clarke County judges. This agency has jurisdiction over all misdemeanor crimes permitted by law, including supervision and collection...... half of the paper...... judicial proceedings. Furthermore, academic projects play an important role during my internship. One of my projects was about the Fourth Amendment, due process law, and warrants. Working side by side with the officers, I realized the importance of knowing how to issue an arrest warrant. Warrants are issued and filed when a probation violation occurs. The warrant must state the name of the officer, the specific violation charged against the probationer, the name of the probationer, and the basis of probable cause. The officer must swear that the facts reported in the warrant are true and ask the judge to sign it. As noted by Harr and Hess (2008), the Fourth Amendment requires that, to be reasonable, all arrests be made with a warrant based on probable cause. In this case the probable cause is the violation of the sentence also known as violation of probation.