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introduction into Ireland. As will be seen, the Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act
1983 which introduced communityservice into Ireland was verycloselymodelled upon the
legislation which was introduced in England and Wales under the Criminal Justice Act
1972, as amended. At the time of writing this study, it is important to stress that the
specific penalty of community service in England and Wales may now be combined in a
Combination Order of Community Service and Probation under the Criminal Justice Act
1991. Community service orders in England and Wales are now called Community
Punishment Orders under the Criminal Justice Act 2003. It is not without significance
that a sanction which commenced in 1972 as a reparative measure has been transformed
into a sanction which nowcarries a specific reference to punishment in its title.
Hood’s (1974) earlier description of the Wootton Committee proposal as a chameleon is
perhaps more apposite today, where the chameleon may be seen to take on a dynamic
quality by running up and down the tariff scale when the penalty is either viewed as a
punitive measure, as a stand-alone penaltyor as a quasi-rehabilitative measure when placed
in combination with a Probation Order. The model of community service which was
introduced into Ireland in 1984 is perhaps best understood by studying the original
community service order introduced in England and Wales in 1972 without further
reference to combination orders or orders that seek to extend the scope of the penalty
beyond the community service penalty itself. Although, the community service project
introduced into Ireland is almost identical with the community service as originally
introduced in England and Wales there are however differences which will be discussed
latter in Chapter 3.
Increasingly, within the criminal justice legislation and systems in Britain and America,
there is a distinct movement in favour of increasing control and surveillance of offenders
(Garland 2001). The willingness bypoliticians, the media and societyin general to consent
to the use of “community-based sanctions” has been accompanied by concomitant
demands that offenders who serve their sentences within community settings, should be
increasingly subject to such control such as electronic tagging, curfews and probation
supervision (Roberts 2004). Without knowing whether such offenders were in serious risk
of imprisonment for the original offence, it is arguable whether these new measures of
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