Community service orders
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
- 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.
For more information call Kent's Community Payback Resource Hub
on 01634 887460.
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.