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justice measure from Britain was identified by Irish policy makers as appropriate for Irish
conditions the assimilation of such a measure into Irish Law was brought about without
too much debate.
The adoption of community service orders in Irish penal policy is a prime example of the
transference of legislative measures from the U.K. to Ireland in the long tradition of
legislative cross-fertilization (O’Mahony 2002: 6). 27 Besides this over-arching legislative
influence emanating from the Parliament at Westminster clearly the adoption of
community service into Ireland could not have come about without the confluence of a
series of factors which made community service a proposal just ripe for introduction in
Ireland in the early 1980s (Jennings 1990). In particular the rapid economic and social
changes in Irish life, which accompanied economic development in the 1960s, saw the
beginning of significant increases in the crime rate and the reception of increasingly more
prisoners into custody. Initially this change in the crime rate was explained by crimes of
economic opportunism (Rottman 1980) but as the 1970s unfolded so too did the spread of
drug addictions, particularly heroin addiction among a large cohort of recidivist offenders.
Not surprisingly, the crime rate among this group of offenders (Chiaken and Chiaken
1990) 28 increased significantly, particularly in relation to predatory crime. In the section
below the factors which influenced the introduction of community service in Ireland are
examinedin greater detail.
1. The Crime Rate Increase
Overall, the crime rate increased four-fold from 1968 to 1981. The total number of
indictable crimes recorded increased from 23,104 in 1968 to 62,946 in 1977 (Report on
Crime 1977:3) to 89,400 in 1981 (Report on Crime 1981:3). These figures do not however
accurately reflect the overall crime rates during the periods mentioned as the vast bulk of
summaryoffences triable in the District Court are not reflected in these figures, nor are the
hybrid offences which are tried summarilybut which could at the election of the D.P.P. be
tried on indictment, such as possession of drugs for the purposes of sale or supply(Section
27 More recently a new trend has emerged where some Irish legislative measures such as the procedures for confiscation of assets acquired as a result of illegal activity, which was
pioneeredin the Republic of Irelandunder the Criminal Assets BureauAct 1996 has been exportedas alegislative ideato Northern IrelandandBritain.
28 Predatorycrime was found to be significantlyelevated in the cohort of active opiate users byChiaken and Chiaken 1990
in the U.S.
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