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these considerations are subject to the principle of proportionality when finally the court
decides the sentence to be imposed. If judges utilise the community service order and the
suspended sentence as a genuine decarcerative measure, the ideal of rehabilitation may be
seen to take prominence in the disposal. However, if the penalties are utilised as stand
alone measures, they acquire a more punitive persona. When the suspended sentence or
the community service order is made, those given responsibility to supervise the order,
usually the probation service, may not necessarily know from which of these perspectives
the sentencing court made the original sentence. Consequently, the welfarist paradigm of
the Probation Service may be in conflict with the Justice paradigm of the sentencing
courts. This constant tension will be examined in this study by reference to the judges’
perceptions of the issues of ownership of the sanctions. Is it possible that a court may
punish and help the offender at the same time or is it the case as Allen (1981) claims that
all rehabilitative approaches degenerate into punitive approaches when appliedin a criminal
justice context?
The study is also facilitated by the comprehensive study on community service orders by
Walsh & Sexton (1999). In particular, the statistical information on the use of the
community service order is clearly established having regard to the large sample used in
that study. However, this present study takes as a point of departure the question of why
and how judges utilise the sanctions in the manner in which theydo and what theyexpect
to achieve by doing so. By clarifying the issues on whether judges utilise the two sanctions
as stand alone penalties or as alternatives to custodial penalties, it may be possible to gain
greater understanding of the general approach which judges in Ireland take when they
approach the function of sentencing.
Insider Perspective :The Researcher
The writer has been a judge of the District Court for 14 years and deals with criminal cases
on a daily basis. It is observed that the criminal justice system would grind to a halt if the
very high degree of guilty pleas was to decrease, such is the volume of cases disposed of
dailybyall of the criminal courts in Ireland. Consequently, the function most performed by
judges exercising criminal jurisdiction in Ireland is that of sentencing itself. To date, no
specific piece of legislation has been enacted to define and prescribe the sentencing
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