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View/Open - CORA - University College Cork

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participation do so for a very short time (Nottinghamshire Probation and After Care<br />

Service 1975).<br />

Young’s final consideration of the rehabilitative component of community service centred<br />

around the beneficial effects of the habits of work. The experience of the Durham and<br />

Nottinghamshire Community Service Projects were used to test the influence of regular<br />

employment upon the suitability of candidates for community service orders. They<br />

showed that an erratic employment record is not necessarily a contra indication for<br />

suitability for community service; rather the community service order can be usefully<br />

employed as a device to intervene in the offenders’ continuous lack of employment,<br />

although limited success can only be achieved. Young likens this type of intervention to<br />

the sheltered workshop allowing the offender to ease back into the work habit. Such<br />

interventions which break the habit of idleness may develop a sense of self-worth in<br />

offenders. The value of work is socially constructed and may differ from one society to<br />

another and may indeed dynamically change in meaning over time within a given society<br />

(Weber 1976:31). West suggests:<br />

Work is a measure of the value placed upon an individual in society. To be<br />

unemployed is to be useless, to be under-employed is to be under valued. (West<br />

1976:83).<br />

Community service schemes which are arranged around projects which may never come<br />

within the offender’s lived experience such as railway preservation and other such<br />

environmental projects lacked immediacyand focus for such offenders. The personal and<br />

social relevance of the community project is essential to connect the offender to the<br />

community. Contact with other workers was also considered as a rehabilitative factor by<br />

Young (1979). The support of voluntaryco-workers has alreadybeen considered, but the<br />

supportive contribution of suitable supervisors was specifically identified by Young as a<br />

key indicator for successful completion of community service. A supportive supervisor<br />

who would informally counsel an offender who may have issues relating to financial<br />

66

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