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the exigencies which presented before the introduction of community service in England
and Wales were equally pressing in the Irish jurisdiction. These included acute prison
overcrowding and a demand for viable alternatives. The search for the rationale for the
Irish community service order begins with the White Paper and the Oireachtas debates on
the sanction. The legislation, as will be seen, differs in one particular respect to exclude the
use of community service except in respect of custodial sentences. The chapter concludes
with a consideration of the community service order within the sentencing modalities of
the different criminal court jurisdictions in Ireland.
Chapter 4 examines a possible expansion of the role for community service under Section
115 of the Children Act 2001 where courts which deal with 16 and 17 year old children
may nowimpose a community service order without firstly apparently, deciding to impose
a custodial sentence. This departure from, and attempted expansion of, the policy fixed in
the 1983 Act presents the first opportunity to see the sanction operate other than in strict
conformity with the decarcerative approach. The writer argues that such a policy rupture
may not be possible due to the manner in which the legislation was framed but attributes
such anomalies to an inadvertent adaptation of the legislation which was used earlier in
EnglandandWales.
In Chapter 5 the suspended sentence is introduced with particular reference to its obscure
origins in Irish sentencing practice. It is observed that the sanction emerged as an assumed
inherent jurisdiction of the sentencing court without any legislative framework or
articulated rationale. The formal imposition of a custodial sentence which is then
suspended points to the avoidance of custody as the principal aim of the sanction.
However, the desire by the judges to control the future behaviour of offenders is seen to
compete as an informal aim of the sanction. This leads to a discussion on whether the
suspended sentence is actually connected to the custodial sentence at all instead of
occupying a space somewhat closer to a conditional discharge. The opportunityto suffer a
custodial sentence is placed in abeyance and the offender is given a suspended sentence.
But what is the relationship between the offender and the court where the offender is
compliant – is the offender “contractually” protected against the custodial sentence? This
relationship is explored fully in the chapter. But the meaning of the suspended sentence
must emerge fully from the cognitions of the judges themselves who offer their views on
the selection of suitable offenders andthe purpose of the sanction.
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