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inhibits any clear measurement of effectiveness of the sanction. If it is decarcerative, it is
only successful for every second sentence made. In contrast, the Irish community service
order is clearly decarcerative in purpose and design. Nevertheless, the Irish judges were
enthusiastic to see the strict avoidance of custody criterion abandoned in favour of the
English model. Despite the requirement that Irish judges must firstlybe of the viewthat a
custodial sentence is necessary before a community service order may be made, a few
judges did admit to experimentation with community service as a stand alone penalty.
Another judge criticised the prior custodial requirement from the perspective of the
offender who is about to be given a custodial sentence but receives a community service
order instead. Such an offender he opines is given a less demanding penalty. But
common to the community service schemes for both jurisdictions is the identification of
the sanction as most suitable for young and first time offenders and for minor offences.
Otherwise, the use of community service as a decarcerative instrument for recidivist,
serious and more mature offenders was not deemed desirable. Apparently, such offenders
were destined not to be diverted from custody at all. Thus, an element of bifurcation in
the selection of offenders for communityservice is seen to emerge.
RECIVIDISM AND COMMUNITY SERVICE
The passage of the Criminal Justice Bill 1971 which heralded community service into law
was accompanied bya sense of optimism both in Parliament and in public that the penalty
could help to transform the behaviour of offenders, a component which was perceived to
be absent in existing penalties such as imprisonment, the suspended sentence and even
probation. By1977 the editorial of the Probation Journal proclaimed that “the acceptance
of community service by the courts and even by hard line politicians has been the penal
success story of the century” (Probation Journal 1977:107). Clearly, in the short number
of years, community service was seen as a settled mainstream penalty used by the courts
which hadgainedsocial acceptability.
The Home Office Research Unit Report (Pease et al 1977) sought to assess the success of
the sentence in terms of early recidivism. Using a control group of offenders who had
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