December 28, 2007: Offenders Do 6m Hours Of Work

Over six million hours of compulsory unpaid work has been carried out by offenders who have received a community order in England and Wales this year. The Ministry of Justice has stated that this is the equivalent of £33 million (calculated on the National Minimum Wage, currently £5.52 per hour) that has benefited local communities across the country.

The work has brought derelict areas and buildings back into public use. Clearing church yards, repairing park benches and removing graffiti, offenders are put to hard work to make communities better places to live and they often carry out work that would otherwise not be completed.

Justice Minister David Hanson said:

'Community Punishments are hard work, restrict liberty, but crucially encourage rehabilitation and reduce re-offending. It is physical work for the offenders but also has tremendous benefits for the community.

'Last year there were 55,514 completions of unpaid work across England and Wales, providing million of hours of free labour for communities. In 2006-07 the National Probation Service had its best performance year with the highest ever rates of enforcement, record numbers of offenders completed accredited programmes and unpaid work, and more offenders starting and completed drug rehabilitation than in any previous year.'

Other data released shows examples of what community sentences have achieved in the 12 months since January 2007. Over three million hours have been spent on environmental and community projects this year. Offenders have spent over two million hours helping charities in the UK .

Evidence has found that offenders who commenced a community sentence in the first quarter of 2004 had lower reoffending rates than predicted (50.5% vs 54.1% respectively). During the same time period, actual reoffending rates for offenders serving custodial sentences of less than twelve months were over 73.4% against a predicted rate of 73.5%.

Community orders are made up of one or more of 12 possible requirements. A community order can last for up to three years but individual requirements can be for different lengths. Requirements may be combined to produce an individual package for each offender. The requirements available for use within a community order are:

• Unpaid work
• Activity (for example, employment, training or education, counselling or mediation)
• (Accredited) Programme (including those tacking anger management, internet sex offending, substance abuse and drink driving)
• Prohibited activity (including being banned from entering pubs of licensed premises, being banned from contacting individuals, working with certain groups or living or staying in the same household as certain groups)
• Curfew (normally this is electronically monitored)
• Exclusion (for instance from pubs, town centres, the vicinity of a victim's home or workplace, from a shop, and so on)
• Residence (at an approved premise or private address)
• Mental Health Treatment
• Drug Rehabilitation
• Alcohol Treatment
• Supervision (attending regular appointments with a probation officer)
• Attendance Centre (for adults aged 18-24 only)

Offenders who fail to comply with their community order are breached and returned to court. The court can re-sentence the offender for the original offence and might impose a custodial sentence. Alternatively, the court can extend or add requirements and allow the community order to continue.