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35,670 community service orders in 1987 to 34,040 in 1989 (Home Office Research and
Statistics Department No. 31 1991).
Young (1979) attributes the lack of any attempt to achieve an overall uniformity of
approach to a number of inter-related factors. The deliberate ambivalence in the purpose
of the sentence obscured any clear initial perspective that the sentence was primarily
punitive rather than seeking to satisfy any other primary goal of sentencing. This
ambivalence was confounded byplacing the organisation and administration of community
service into the hands of a service which was then firmly informed by the rehabilitative
paradigm of sentencing. Additionally, local conditions were accommodated into schemes
which required certain flexibilityon the part of communityservice organisers, for example,
in a rural area time for travel to work might be discounted from the number of hours of
communityservice to be performed.
The arrival of the national standards for community service orders in April of 1989
presented a sharp challenge to the traditionally discretionary practices of the Probation
Service in the administration of community service orders. Although the tradition by the
probation officer to offer help to the offender to change his behaviour continued during
this period, the probation officer was not precluded from viewing the offender through a
number of different and seemingly conflicting paradigms. Such models of man whether
moral, ethical, psycho-pathological and psycho-social can be deployed by the probation
officer to justify practice (McWilliams and Pease 1980). While this latter view might
equally be criticised as an a-la-carte justification of professional practice, the ability of the
Probation Service to match the correspondingly fluid and seemingly conflicting aims of
sentencers allowed the Probation Service to negotiate a pathway on behalf of their clients
while maintaining a firm commitment to the positive non-custodial features of community
service such as reintegration in a socialised environment. The imposition of national
guidelines in Englandand Wales andin Scotlandbrought about an adjustment in probation
practices when dealing with communityservice orders. No longer would the extension of
discretion be allowed in respect of non-compliance with community service orders where
the offender failed to comply with the terms of the order. McIvor reports that offenders
on community service in Scotland adjusted their compliance practices once they had
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