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Many of these commentators have argued that community service is a direct lineal
descendant of work-related sanctions of an earlier period and carries with it to a significant
degree, the elements of compulsion and control of the offender. Pease (1980) argues that
consent to impressment was not always absent reciting the provision of the Insolvent
Debtors Relief Act 1670, which allowed debtors who were unable to buy their way out of
prison, a means of escape by joining the Navy. When considering the element of the
indeterminate nature of impressment he cites the Debtors Act 1703, which limited the
duration of impressment to the periodof the duration of the War.
The modern communityservice order in contrast requires the convicted person to give his
or her express consent to perform a specified number of unpaid hours work in the
community. It is obligatoryon the Court to explain to him/her the nature of the work, the
conditions of attendance at such work programme and the quality of work required.
Additionally, the penalty of community service is limited to 240 hours maximum to be
performedwithin one year.
Notwithstanding this, the convicted person is obliged under penal sanction to provide
personal service of labour or skills to answer for the crime committed.
Perhaps the most contested views concerning the geneses of community service relate to
claims that earlier work related sanctions provided a prototype for the newsanction. This
claim to historical antecedence for the community service order is particularly expressed
when dealing with the work related sanction of impressment but the claim is challenged by
a number of writers who viewcommunityservice as a whollynewpenal concept.
During the periods when impressment was used as a sanction, very many prisoners were
incarcerated under sentence of death for the commission of felonies. Impressment into
the army or navy presented as a choice between life or death for the condemned prisoner.
No doubt, during times of War the mass clearing out of prisons by impressment served a
number of other functions such as the relief of overcrowding, removal of offenders from
their localities if due for release and significant financial savings in the housing, guarding
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