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Community service is a mode of punishment provided by the law in which the offender can escape imprisonment or fines. Community service acts as an alternative to the harsh criminal punishment. Generally, community service is handed down by a judge or magistrate to the first-timer offender or teenage offender. This punishment can also be handed down in the case of minor offenses, for example, in the case of traffic violations, petty theft, and other non-violent offenses. The concept of community service forms from the idea that the offender is required to perform unpaid work or other activity in the community under the direction of a probation officer/supervisor.
Community service is an improved and cost-effective alternative to punishment, which comes with many benefits to both the offender and the government. For instance, it is by far cheaper than sentencing one to imprisonment (Barajas, 1993; Larivee, 1993), with a contrast of £3,000 for community service, per offender, versus £38,636 for imprisonment, per offender (Ministry of Justice, 2018). Therefore, with both community service and imprisonment having the solemn purpose of punishing, community service is a less expensive approach to reform criminals.
For example, a recent inquiry has calculated that diversion from custody to residential drug treatment produces a lifetime cost saving of approximately £60,000 per person (Make Justice Work, 2011). Additionally, with prisons facing so much difficulty of overcrowding, with nearly 59,000 people being sent to prison to serve a sentence in 2018 (Prison Reform Trust, 2019), more prisoners would only mean more food supply, more supplies, and further security needed. The increase in the number of prisoners subsequently increases the costs for running prisons which community service comes into account as a great alternative to cut government costs on prisons as community service provides similar, if anything, a better approach to reform criminals, at less cost. HM Prisons and Probation Service has experienced significant cuts to its budget in recent years. Between 2010-11 and 2014-15, its budget was reduced by around 20%, and despite increases since then, these have been almost entirely canceled out by the effects of inflation (Sturge, G. and Robins, J. 2018)
This also helps in reducing overcrowding as the prison population is still projected to rise by a further 3,200 by March 2023 (Ministry of Justice, 2018) meaning the security and officers in prisons can then focus more on the inmates. Consequently, the money saved can be reinvested for development in prisons to further improve overcrowding and supply. Evidently, the use of community service has been known to help improve overcrowding in prisons as the use of community sentences by the courts increased by 28 percent between 1999 and 2009 (Ministry of Justice 2010a). A key driver behind this expansion has been the desire to use community sentences as a mechanism for controlling the prison population.
Furthermore, from a survey taken from public opinion, fewer than 1 in 10 people said that having more people in prison was the most effective way to deal with crime. Early inventions, such as better parenting, discipline in schools and better rehabilitation, were all rated as more effective responses (Crest Advisory, 2018). Analyzing other voices in the debate of whether community punishment is more effective than prisons is important to analyze the true strengths and weaknesses as society plays a huge role because they have a high impact on political inputs.
On the other hand, a disadvantage of community punishment is its risk to the public. To be more precise, having potential criminals out on the streets, whether they be completing unpaid work or programs, the public may fear these criminals being so free. Additionally, we must question, can we trust that this opportunity given to these criminals to do community service isn’t actually used as an opportunity to continue engaging in criminal activity? You can include information about one of the prison's justifications is to protect the public by holding prisoners. Furthermore, these criminals are not under supervision enough to monitor their activity outside of their unpaid work and programs which may mean that they could be putting on an innocent act when under supervision but still engaging in criminal activity outside of this supervision. This then takes away the level of seriousness in punishment as criminals are still free to an extent which could also mean that they take this ‘second chance’ for advantage and community sentence would be the blame for this. This is because, had a criminal been sentenced to imprisonment, they would not be able to continue engaging in criminal activities as they are under strict supervision and have no access to weapons. These rehabilitative processes provide relatively little security and little reassurance to the public in the short term (McNeill, 2011).
Despite this risk, another major advantage of community punishment is its effectiveness in decreasing the rate of recidivism as nearly 48% of people who are sentenced to imprisonment are reconvicted of another offense within one year of release (Ministry of Justice, 2019). Research has shown proven that prison is not very effective in terms of deterring people from committing new crimes, in fact, there is evidence that suggests that community service is more effective than any other kind of punishment, according to the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research study (Dockley, A., Loader, I. & Howard League, 2013) Moreover, community service is a healthier approach than imprisonment as community service offers help to the offenders to rehabilitate more effectively, in comparison to prisons. This is examined based on the idea that community service provides punishment that educates the offenders that they have committed a crime and will have to give back to the community as an act of forgiveness, and once the community service is completed they can prove to both themselves and their probation officer that they have changed. By doing so, offenders avoid the high risk of reoffending as community service would have provided them a second chance to prove that they now know better. However, in comparison to prisons, being imprisoned and surrounded by so many dangerous criminals takes away the little chances of rehabilitation as putting a first-time offender in the same environment as big-time criminals for some time will have a huge negative impact on any first-time offender as they may feel judged for their offense hence may go on to commit a further crime in order to ‘fit it’. So, community service helps separate offenders of minor offenses from hardened criminals to avoid an increase in minor deviant behavior.
Moreover, community service also benefits the courts as it provides alternatives for the courts to avoid sentencing one for imprisonment, whose crime may be minor but too major to get away with just a fine. This way, the offenders will also be placed in an environment where they have a greater chance of rehabilitating. It will also help in reducing social stigma towards offenders. In this context, social stigma means the negative perception that the public forms towards offenders. Protecting young, minor offenders from this kind of social stigma is important as it helps build confidence in the offender to avoid forcing the offender to commit more serious crimes, simply because they already have this negative title and are viewed negatively by the public.
Additionally, it will also help in preventing and reducing the social stigma towards the offenders. Social stigma can be defined as severe social disapproval of personal characteristics or beliefs that are perceived to be against cultural norms. In this context, social stigma can be referred to as the negative perception of the public toward the offenders. Protection from social stigma is important for young and new offenders as it helps to build confidence for rehabilitate purposes. Social stigma has great potential to force offenders to commit the same or other serious offenses. Community service provides a just punishment to the offenders.
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