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Sunday, 22 November 2009

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Crime and justice

Community sentencing

Most offenders are not sentenced to prison, but instead are given sentences to serve in the community. They will either do unpaid work, get job training, receive psychological help, or all three. Find out how it works and how you can get involved in deciding what sentences offenders serve in your area.

Types of community sentences

Judges and magistrates will consider what crime each person has committed, and look at why they did it and how likely they are to commit another crime. They then decide on the specific community sentence each person should get.

Offenders can be ordered to do any of the following as part of their sentence:

Community Payback - between 40 and 300 hours of unpaid work (see below)
complete job training
attend school
complete a treatment programme – to deal with anger control, drug use, alcohol abuse
avoid activity, such as visits to pubs or football matches
abide by a curfew, monitored by an electronic tag
complete a ‘residence sentence’ (which would mean they must live at a specified place, such as a probation hostel)
get mental health treatment
fulfil a ‘supervision sentence’ (which requires them to have regular appointments with a probation officer)
go to an attendance centre, where 18-24-year-olds receive help dealing with the issues that led them into crime

Community Payback

Community Payback is unpaid work done by criminals as part of their community sentences.

Convicted criminals serving their sentences are easy to spot, wearing bright orange jackets as they do work including:

cleaning up litter
clearing public land
repairing and redecorating community centres and other buildings
removing graffiti

Local residents can make suggestions online of projects they’d like to see done by offenders serving community sentences. These can range from cleaning up litter in a park, to removing graffiti from a school wall, or clearing fly-tipped rubbish from the street.

To get involved you can contact your local Probation Service office. They can give you a form to fill in, or you may be able to download the form off their websites.

Find your local probation service Opens new window

If the rules are broken

If a criminal who has been given a community sentence break the rules of that sentence, they are sent back to court and given an additional punishment.

In some cases they are sentenced to prison.