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who might be suitable for it because they are totally disorganised and unstructured, incapable, for
example, of turningup for an appointment.”A8J1SC
Thus, the matrix of considerations outlined above discloses that communityservice maybe
indicated for a number of reasons which relate to the seriousness of the offence both as a
threshold and as a ceiling to the use of the sanction as well as the particular characteristics
of the individual offender.
Profile of Offenders Given Community Service
The reduction in the rate of unemployment among offenders was offered bythe Probation
Service staff as a reason for a decline in the extent to which community service orders are
used by courts (Walsh and Sexton 1999). Paradoxically, when the measure was discussed
in the Oireachtas in 1983, the possibility of losing employment due to imprisonment was
advanced as a positive advantage for using community service over imprisonment. It
should be recalled that this was also a reason given in the Wootton Report (1970) to allow
offenders the opportunity to work off a community-based penalty during “leisure-time”
and not in substitution for a period of employment, training or education. The
explanation might be advanced that greater employment opportunities open to offenders
present as an excuse for non-performance of community service rather than a reason for
the courts not using the sanction for suitablyemployedoffenders duringtheir leisure-time.
However in the survey the judges expressed a clear preference to engage those who were
unemployed and otherwise suitable in community service schemes to facilitate the
experience of regular work andthe discipline requiredto holddown employment:
“… I think that the community service orders tend, in my very limited experience, to apply to
people who maybe haven’t had a whole lot of education andhaven’t hada start in life …”A1J2DC
“I suppose really it starts the disciplinary process and getting people back on the straight and
narrow. It’s probably connected, I would think in the type of work that the Probation Services do,
except that they have particular programmes. The community service work is under certain
directions andit’s reallypart of people correcting their lifestyle.”A3J1CC
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