View/Open - CORA - University College Cork

not receive a custodial sentence. By placing this residual group one rung below
imprisonment, those offenders within this group are on greater hazard of ascending the
final rung of the ladder through breach procedures more easily than would have been the
case if a fine or probation hadbeen applied.
The position of community service in the sentencing tariff in England and Wales must
remain ambivalent as a result of this structural feature in the original legislation (Young
1979). It will be shown in the next chapter how the Irish legislature sought to deal with
this dilemma when they unambiguously fixed the community service order as a direct
substitution for an immediately contemplated custodial sentence. In doing so the Irish
authorities relied heavily upon Young’s research which emphasised the unsatisfactory
application of conflicting sentencingaims in the English sanction.
The extent which Irish sentencers maintain fidelity to this requirement was questioned by
Walsh and Sexton (1999) and to some degree this is borne out in the empirical work of this
study where at least two Judges stated they would sometimes use the sanction without
reference to the prior custodial requirement. In this regardone judge stated:
“…Well I would use it for offences which might not necessarilywarrant a prison sentence because I
feel it is something that a particular Defendant, I think that it would be good for him or her as a
penalty, as a sanction if youlike” A1J3DC.
While another “confessed”:
“…I have perhaps technicallysinned of course against the legislation a fewtimes – not an awful lot
of times but in a case where I wouldnormallybe imposinga heavy(fine) andI do fine veryheavily
90