View/Open - CORA - University College Cork

offenders as comparedwith adult offenders. These addedfeatures of professional
consideration, which the probation officer must address when dealingwith the juvenile
offender, maywell further complicate the negotiated relationship between the probation
officer andoffender sentencedto a communityservice order (Vass 1984). In particular
the persistent problem which probation officers report in motivatinga large number of
offenders to complete their communityservice orders, to attendat the communityservice
scheme with regularityand on time andcomplywith reasonable directions given bythe
communityservice organiser (Vass 1984, McIvor 1992, Eysenck 1986) must be expectedto
be more acute when dealingwith a growingcohort of sixteen and seventeen year old
teenagers sentencedto communityservice.
Moreover, if such schemes are mixedto include both adults and offenders aged between
sixteen and seventeen, which is the case at present in Irish communityservice schemes,
one couldfinda situation where an adult offender is workingalongside a teenager offender
where both are sentenced to communityservice, but the adult offender would be
performingcommunityservice in lieuof a known termof imprisonment for a reasonably
serious offence, while the seventeen year old might be servingcommunityservice for a
relativelyminor offence andwithout knowingwhat the alternative communitypenalty
might be if he/she is in default. This scenario immediatelyimports an element of
unfairness andinequityinto the operation of communityservice orders which cannot easily
be explainedawaybyreferringto the Children Act 2001 as a statutoryscheme for dealing
with criminal offendingbychildren which seeks to divert such offenders fromcustody.
The perception of this inherent inequityin treatingadult andjuvenile offenders differently
under this sentencing regime will certainlynot assist the probation officer in further
motivating the juvenile client/offender to complete his/her communityservice order.
As alreadyindicated, the primaryfunction of communityservice is punitive (Young1979)
notwithstanding the rehabilitative aspects which mayflowfrom the performance of a
communityservice byan offender suitablymatched to an appropriate scheme (Pease
1981:6). When rehabilitation emerges it must be considereda bonus (ibid). There is no
obvious characteristic of the communityservice schemes which operate in Ireland, which
wouldcause one to conclude that such schemes are not similarlypunitive in their primary
manifestation in this jurisdiction with some elements of reparation, rehabilitation and
reintegration accruing to the benefit of some offenders on such schemes but certainlynot
in respect of all such offenders. One might argue that the separation of the scheme for
209