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CHAPTER 3
“Laws, like houses, leanonone another” – Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Reflections onthe Revolutionin
France (1790)
COMMUNITY SERVICE IN IRELAND A JOURNEY FROM NECESSITY
TO DISCRETION
INTRODUCTION
This chapter sets out to explore howcommunityservice orders came to be established as a
sanction in Irish sentencing law and practice. The pervading influence of administrative
and legislative measures in the neighbouring jurisdiction of England and Wales will be
discussed to illuminate how the sanction was established in that jurisdiction and
subsequentlytransferred, as a sanction, to an Irish setting. The search for the rationale for
introducing community service necessitates a thorough reading of the parliamentary
debates in the Dail and Seanad (Senate) as well as official publications and reports which
promoted the new penalty with differing emphases, varying in degree from the need to
relieve prison overcrowding on the one hand, to a preference to use the setting of
communityas a place of punishment on the other.
As previously noted, a part of this study seeks to examine the role of the community
service order in Ireland in light of judicial practices and perceptions where the sanction is
designed to act primarily as a decarcerative instrument. However, the function of
rehabilitation as an aim in Irish sentencing is also explored. The deterrent and rehabilitative
aspects of imprisonment will be discussed, as will the role of other sanctions such as fines
and probation with particular reference to the seeming reluctance of some sentencers to
use such penalties more frequently. The direct economic costs of incarceration are
explored to locate a rationale for the use of less expensive sanctions instead of custody
which maynot always be deemednecessary.
Certain local exigencies will be explored to explain the political and penal factors which
influence the introduction of the sanction at a particular time, which factors, it will be seen
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