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First Bail and Supervision Act
- When
- 1841
- Where
- Boston Police Court
John Augustus persuaded a Boston Police Court judge to give him custody of a convicted drunkard in 1841, marking the origin of probation.
In 1841, Augustus paid bail for a man arrested for public intoxication, moving the judge to set the man free. He then secured custody of the offender for a brief period to help him appear rehabilitated by the time of sentencing.
Sources
- Probation Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-22
- John Augustus Wikipedia, revision of 2025-08-04
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.