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unsatisfactory or unreasonable by Supervisors. By and large, ‘legitimate’ reasons
advanced by offenders are in relation to sickness, family illness and employment in
that order” (Vass 1990:119).
Certain additional features begin to develop within the practice and organisation of
community service schemes which militated against the completion of community service
orders by offenders. Increasingly the Probation Service was required to negotiate, cajole
andfinallythreaten breach proceedings before compliance couldbe achieved.
In the six pilot areas used in the initial period and indeed in the full implementation of the
schemes throughout England and Wales, practical guidelines which were contemplated for
the original legislation to give cohesion and uniformity to the Scheme were not brought
forward. The Under Secretaryof State when speakingon the legislation stated:
There are four aspects about which the Secretary of State will have to lay down
general rules to cover work with community service. It is obviously necessary that
there should be similar arrangements throughout the country with regards to the
keeping of records, the reckoning of time actually worked and ensuring that it is
actuallydone. (H.C. Debates, Standing Committee G 10/2/72).
Young points out that despite this obvious necessityno such rules had been made by1979.
In a sense, the standards used insofar as these were settled standards during the
experimental period continued until the introduction of the National Standards for
Community Service in April 1989, a period of sixteen years. While procedures were
settled within individual Probation and After-Care areas the same procedures were not
adopted universally across all of the 55 Probation and After Care areas. This lead to
notable discrepancies and a perception among some sentencers that community service
was subject to the same discretionarypractices used in traditional probation. A noticeable
decline in the use of community service orders by the courts was evident, decreasing from
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