Suchergebnisse

We have allowed community service to become a separate and second class zone, occupied by a 'new breed of professional, with different skills, tasks and values, having little in common with those of a probation officer'. Such discrimination and indifference has impoverished the Service and leaves CS exposed to any privatisation bid.

Abstract: The community service order has been in operation for over a decade. In the course of time the order has seen considerable praise and success. But there have been problems too. In this brief paper, the author summarises the major problems that have been identified in the period and calls for afresh review of the purpose and content of community service. He then selects what he regards to be the most pressing issues that need to be addressed by administrators and policymakers and suggests what possible changes could be introduced to improve matters further.

A unique account of the realities of a Community Service work session, based on lengthy participant observation. The author highlights how justice is negotiated between offender and supervisor, deviance is absorbed and pragmatic adjustments made.

The author reviews the national statistics of breach proceedings in community service, and refers to his own local research on the same subject. He discusses the role conflicts for the probation officer initiating breach proceedings, and points out some of the internal and public problems to which this gives rise. Finally he outlines some of the changes which may occur in a community service worker's self-image and position in the organisation as a whole.

Abstract: The authors offer a comparative discussion of community service by offenders (CS). They suggest that in both England and Ontario concern about the social and economic costs of imprisonment, doubts about prison effectiveness, a rising crime rate and interest in community based alternatives to imprisonment form the background to CS. They point to the main differences between the two contexts and the way CS operates. They explain those differences by resort to socio‐historical, legal and administrative factors which, they argue, have been at work since the inception of the sanction in both contexts. In particular, they point out the possible reasons why the English CS is a male dominated partial prison alternative, while in Ontario, women are overrepresented on a sanction which rarely, if ever, functions as an alternative to imprisonment. They also show how the same factors have been instrumental in shaping CS which in England is higher up in the tariff structure than in Ontario.