In the United Kingdom, social workers draw for their professional activities from: charity and philanthropy; Christian reformism; the psychiatric and educational services; the Poor Law; social and political radicalism; and State control. In these strands of social work are themes of both liberation and constraint which make social work an unstable activity; in most, if not all, areas of social work there is room for workers to justify widely different actions by reference to one set of principles rather than another. However, in the present justice system, a profession which strives towards sensitive and individualized judgments is being asked to manage a form of community punishment which will inevitably involve discretion shrinkage and increased routinization. 18 references.