An overview traces the development of the probation service in Quebec, Canada, and discusses the service's legal and operating dimensions. A report looks at a pilot study conducted in Quebec to discover whether sentencing offenders to a certain number of hours of community work rather than to imprisonment would be acceptable to the community and to the criminal justice system. Attention is given to three correctional or sentencing alternatives with which Quebec's probation service is becoming more involved: 'dejudicialization,' restitution, and provisional liberty. A description portrays the effects of introducing Carkhuff's problem-solving approach into Quebec Probation Service's clinical practice, a practice criticized for being too unstructured and too situational. A look at the future of supervised release as a concept and as a system argues that supervising officers must be able to recognize the intrinsically political nature of definitions of criminality and of penal intervention. Finally, a new role for probation agents and the probation service to play is suggested as an answer to the demise of the rehabilitation and medical model of corrections. A bibliography of approximately 50 citations, and an English summary are included, and a bibliography accompanies many of the articles. --in French.