View/Open - CORA - University College Cork

turn. If the offender turns up and performs community service that is the end of the
matter. If s/he does not attend without reasonable excuse breach proceedings are
warranted. Thus, the element of discretion for the Probation Officer, whose professional
orientation is permeated by discretionary practices, is seen to diminish in the new
instrumental role which is demanded of the Probation Service in the implementation of a
community service order. A certain continuity in the welfarist orientation by Irish
Probation Officers was identified by some of the judges who were interviewed in this
study. Such ‘probationizing’ practices maybe seen to conflict with sentencing expectations
which would otherwise require a reasonably strict compliance with a community service
order.
COMMUNITY SERVICE AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO CUSTODY
The approach taken by the Wootton Committee to recommend community service as an
available penalty to the courts without first testing such a penalty in advance was
acknowledged frankly in the Report (Ibid.para.7). This essentially pragmatic approach has
much to recommend it but also contains within it the distinct possibility that the penalty
would become assimilated into the criminal justice system (Young 1979; Pease 1977)
without critical reference to the precise contribution it might make to the overall reduction
of the prison population or the reduction of crime. The reduction in the use of
imprisonment was always regarded as a primary objective of community service. The
extent to which the penalty became just another penalty without specific reference to its
original purpose as an alternative to prison, has been criticised by a number of writers.
Pease (1980) characterises the discourse on community service as an alternative to prison
as a confused debate. He identifies the seed of such confusion in the ambiguous approach
taken by the Wootton Committee in 1970 and in particular the open-ended application of
community service to a number of offences, not necessarily imprisonable offences (Home
Office 1970:para. 37). The proposal to introduce community service for such a wide
range of criminal behaviours allowed the use of community service as a via media in
sentencing disposals. However, in the period leading up to the introduction of
community service in England and Wales, the confusion attendant upon the use of
community service as a genuine alternative to prison persisted. The Home Secretarygave
84