September 1, 2008: Tougher Community Work For Offenders

Steps to further toughen up the demanding physical work offenders carry out on community payback were announced today. Courts will be able to hand out tougher and more intense penalties for a range of offenders - including those in possession of knives - who are ordered to carry out work such as picking up litter, renovating community centres, clearing undergrowth and graffiti for local communities.

Starting today, anyone convicted of a knife-related offence who is unemployed and sentenced to the maximum 300 hours of community payback from the courts will complete their sentence in intensive blocks of up to five days a week. This will mean more intensive labour for all those knife offenders who are not in work across all 42 probation areas.

A pilot will also run to see if this sort of intense work could be rolled out to all types of offenders given community payback. West Yorkshire will trial a programme for all offenders receiving 200 hours of work from the courts doing this intensively in 6 weeks. This will represent a significant loss of liberty and free time for many people with work taking place 5 days per week and continued tough consequences for not turning up.

The measures follow the recent announcement made by the Prime Minister that community payback for offenders would be tough, visible and effective. Minister of State for Justice David Hanson MP also highlighted that more offenders are currently 'paying back' the community through work at weekends when they expect to have free time, with 74% of community payback programmes running on either Saturday or Sunday. He said:

>'Offenders sentenced to "pay" for their crimes within the community can already expect to work hard and lose much of their free time. By introducing intensive 5 days a week payback for many knife crime offenders we are further toughening these punishments. Initially the change will affect the small number of knife crime offenders who are given the longest community payback sentences instead of custody by magistrates, but we are also announcing a pilot to assess the suitability and success of extending this over time to a much wider range of offenders.

'It is important that the public can see and influence the work that is being carried out by offenders in their neighbourhoods. This is crucial to ensure that there is confidence in community sentences.

'The public can already suggest projects for offenders to work on to their local probation office and we are intending to set up community panels linked closely to local communities which will further enable members of the public to propose work projects for offenders in their local area.'

>Last year there were 55,771 completions of community payback across England and Wales, providing over six million hours of free labour for communities.

As well as providing a tough form of punishment for offenders and a constructive form of payback to communities, tough community sentences can be more effective than a short prison sentence in terms of rehabilitating some offenders, turning them away from crime and therefore giving greater protection to the public.

Recent statistics show that frequency of reoffending for community sentences have fallen sharply by 13%. The reoffending rate following a short custodial sentence is 59.7%. The reoffending rate following a community sentences is 37.9%.

A community sentence can be made up of one or more of the following 12 options: compulsory community payback, specific activity - such as a community drug centre, supervision - daily or weekly meetings with a probation officer, an accredited programme to tackle issues such as anger management, prohibited activity, curfew, exclusion from a place, activity at an attendance centre, residence with an automatic curfew, mental health treatment, drug rehabilitation and alcohol treatment.

Sentences are constructed to ensure the public's safety is paramount, the offender is duly punished, but they are also given the opportunity to rehabilitate and get help for the some of the root causes behind their offending.