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this ranging from 63 hours to 11 hours equivalent to 1 month imprisonment with 27 hours
as the national average. Secondly, some Courts may have imposed community service in
lieu of what would otherwise be a non-custodial penalty although in the actual order made
a custodial alternative is specified. Thirdly, the use of community service orders in the
higher Criminal Courts, where the maximum number of hours is fixed by statute at 240
hours, imports the possibility that the alternative custodial penalty if greater than 12
months would upset the equivalence between 240 hours and 12 months imprisonment as
the benchmark for consistency. Fourthly, in rural areas the courts were identified as more
readily willing to impose community service orders for less serious offences, such as less
serious assaults and driving offences and the same courts impose shorter alternative
periods of imprisonment on average at 4 months compared with 5.6 months in urban
areas. Walsh and Sexton (1999) suggest this may be due to a combination of factors and
not one single factor.
The relatively low use of community service by sentencing courts in Ireland was further
reported upon by the Comptroller And Auditor General in 2004 and more recently by the
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform in a value for money report (Petrus
VFM) in 2009. Both reports expressed a consistent view that community service as an
alternative to the custodial sentence was underutilised when compared to the overall
number of custodial sentences given and in light of international comparisons. In
particular, the Petrus Report (2009) found that only 1158 community service orders were
made for all courts in Ireland in the year 2006. A further important finding showed that the
distribution of community service orders across the courts, which were overwhelmingly
District Court orders , was quite uneven. A significant number of these courts rarely or
never impose a community service order while a relatively small group of courts utilise the
sanction with much greater frequency.
Of particular interest in the Walsh and Sexton empirical study (1999) is the stated
alternative penalty contained in each order which is extrapolated from the very adequate
sample used– the national average for length of substitute prison termis 5.1 months. 46 The
46 (P. 35.2) The variation among the larger Court areas is notable. Of these Limerick is the highest at seven months. Dublin is not too far behind at 5.8
months. Cork cityhowever, comes in belowthe national average at 3.7 months. Tipperary/ Waterford at 3.1 months, Wexford at 1.8 months, Kilkennyat
4.2 months andKerryat 4.9 months).
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