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The offender was presented in the replies as one who was disposed to help him/herself
while offering an early plea of guilty, by ensuring continuity of employment while not
entering into custody or by acquiring the habits of punctuality and compliance in the
performance of a communityservice order where the offender maybe unemployed.
Risk
Generally, the judges were inclined to use community service as a sanction where the risk
of re-offending was low. In the study, the judges disclosed that they apply filters in the
selection of offenders for community service. The process of selection of suitable
candidates for community service turns on the fulcrum of considerations of risk to the
public or specific victims and ultimately the seriousness of the offence and the offenders’
antecedent behaviours.
The offences which are deemedto be generallyunsuitable for communityservice andmore
deserving of a custodial sentence tend to fall into a category where imprisonment is
perceived to be the most appropriate disposition. In the responses given bythe judges, the
issues of a proportionate sentence or desert and risk containment compete for supremacy
in the formulation of the sentence. A certain selectivity of shallow end, non serious
offenders for community service is suggested in these responses. The residual offenders
deemed unsuitable by reference to their class of offences seem destined not to be diverted
away from the prison. Notwithstanding the availability of community service as a
diversionary tool of sentencing, those deserving of a prison sentence will, generally
speaking, receive a prison sentence. The judges seemed to be averse to incorporating the
element of risk into a community service order. Rather, if such risk was identified the
balance wouldgenerallytip in favour of a custodial sentence.
One judge spoke of the alienation between the offender and society in general and the
difficulties in engagingthe offender meaningfullyin anynon custodial sanction:
“A lot of these young fellows are totally, I won’t say excluded from society, but they haven’t got a
job. They never got on at school and they associated with like-minded (individuals) as themselves
andthis maybe puts theminto some different places.”A5J1CC
When pressed what confidence he had that the Probation Service would carry out the
courts wishes or orders in the supervision of such offenders he replied:
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