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courts, tend to learn and anticipate the likelihood of a particular bench of Magistrates or
court accepting a recommendation for community service (Young 1979:30). Equally the
Courts tend to be influenced bythe sentencing reports of the local Probation Service. This
closed loop of influence perpetuates the acceptability of sentencing norms and
recommendations between the Courts andthe Probation Service (Davies 1974:30).
The recommendations in a social enquiryreport present the first moment and opportunity
in the exercise of discretionaryjudgement bythe Probation Service in the overall operation
of communityservice orders. While it is recognised that courts are not bound to followa
negative recommendation, in general a report which defines an offender as unsuitable for
community service will not be ignored and an Order for community service made
notwithstanding. (Pease et al 1975). The discretionarypower of veto according to Young:
“…lies in the fact that the availability of suitable work is partly determined by the
nature of the offence and the character and circumstances of the offender. Thus an
organiser can maintain that no suitable work could be found, for example, because
the instabilityof the offender or the seriousness of his offence would present him an
unjustifiable risk to the community.” (1979:32).
The scheme of community service introduced in England and Wales provided that
community service could be imposed in cases where the penalty of imprisonment was
provided for in respect of the relevant offence. As this threshold could admit offenders
who might equally receive a fine or probation, the probation officer in preparing a report
would not be in a position to know in advance what the real penalty eventually might be.
This presented a danger for the probation officer who had the difficult task of anticipating
the penalty which might be imposed. Some probation officers reported that community
service might be inappropriatelypromoted in social enquiryreports to sentencing courts to
allowan offender to avoid the harsh penalty of imprisonment. The exercise of discretion
byprobation officers in this waymayhave the effect of moving the offender higher up the
scale of punitiveness to avoid a perceived threat of even greater punitiveness (West
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