COMMUNITY SENTENCING

A community sentence is simply a sentence that is served whilst the offender still lives in the community – in the majority of cases at their own home.

Implementation of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 has meant wide-ranging changes to sentencing from 4th April 2005. Gone are the former Community Rehabilitation (Probation) Orders and Community Punishment (Service) Orders, to be replaced with one single Community Order.

Any breach of an Order imposed by the courts will result in the individual being prosecuted, and returned to court for resentence. All offenders under probation supervision are regularly risk assessed.

COMMUNITY ORDER

The Community Order is a court imposed sentence that replaces all previous community orders, and can last for a maximum of 3 years. Its benefits are that it can be tailored to each individual offender, and must include at least one of the following twelve requirements:

Unpaid Work (the former community service)
Specified Activity (which could include attendance at classes to improve literacy and/or numeracy)
Programme (each programme is offence based, and nationally accredited)
Prohibited Activity
Exclusion (restricting the activity or behaviour of the offender)
Curfew (commonly known as tagging)
Residence (requiring the offender to live at a probation hostel)
Mental Health Treatment
Drug Rehabilitation
Alcohol Treatment
Supervision (similar to the former Probation Order)
Attendance Centre (for under 25s only)

COMMUNITY ORDER

The Order is managed by a probation officer who is responsible for the planning, co-ordination and delivery of the customised supervision programme. This includes getting offenders to look at the reasons for their offending and motivating them to change. The Order also focusses on getting offenders to accept responsibility for their actions and encourages discipline and awareness of the impact of their actions on others. The supervision programme is demanding and an offender has to comply with all aspects of it. Should an offender fail to do so, he or she will be returned to court for re-sentence.

UNPAID WORK

Unpaid Work requires offenders to perform demanding, unpaid work for the benefit of the community of 40 to 300 hours duration. Typical projects range from decorating, fencing, gardening, landscaping and building work, to charity and conservation work. An individual project can save a community as much as £30,000, and often motivate an offender to seek work of similar nature on completion of the Order. All work is carefully supervised by probation staff to ensure that work is of a consistently high standard.

The offender is carefully supervised throughout their Unpaid Work, which will involve them keeping to disciplined requirements while undertaking socially useful work. Many offenders acquire new skills during their sentence, thereby increasing their employability once the Order is complete. Again, should an offender fail to comply with the requirements of the Order, they can be returned to court for re-sentence.

Follow this link to view the Community Order Flowchart.