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Has anybody ever seen anyone completing community punishment?
Vic Barlow29/ 8/2007
ACCORDING to the Sentencing Advisory Panel, yobs who breach ASBOs and conmen who trick the elderly out of keepsakes and cash should be given community punishment, rather than sent to prison.
We already have a vast army of offenders serving the community and they're like extraterrestrials: we suspect they are out there but we don't have any proof.
Every week in the Express we read of offenders receiving community punishment. Where do they go? Have you ever seen them serving the community? Can you name any worthwhile project they completed?
The only time I saw anything was when staff from the probation service took me to see two blokes cleaning graffiti off a wall.
Given our magistrates' love of community punishment orders, I'd expect to see armies of offenders swarming over the borough like builder ants.
There shouldn't be a piece of litter in the entire county. We could probably allocate two offenders to each chip paper. How is it possible to have broken glass, trash and cigarette butts strewn on every stairwell in town when magistrates have so many hours community punishment to fill?
What are all these offenders doing? If you had your head caved in with a beer bottle you'd at least expect to see your attacker picking up the glass.
Try this little test. Count how many times you read of offenders being given community punishment in the next month, then look for evidence of their endeavours. Let me know the result.
If you're in the probation service, please don't write. I don't want to know what goes on in the background. I want to know what's happening in the foreground where verification is clear for all to see.
It's no consolation to any community to hear that criminals, who plagued their lives, are doing something useful somewhere. The entire community needs to see the evidence. They want to be convinced they aren't being short-changed by the forces of law and order.
You can't blame the public for being a mite sceptical. ASBOs were this government's nuclear weapon. Failure to obey would trigger an immediate prison term, or so we were told. The enormous cost in manpower, time and emotional energy in issuing an ASBO would be justified by its crushing power.
Then the prisons filled up and residents found the ASBO wasn't so crushing after all. The same violent thugs they'd been persuaded to give evidence against in court returned to torment them, sometimes with devastating consequences.
One family, driven out of their Macclesfield home after just such a case, had to be given a police escort out of town.
In an all out effort to win the hearts and minds of the lawless, the criminal justice system has lost the hearts and minds of the law abiding.
It's a very dangerous game to play.
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The irish have adopted Tar and feathers, which is also quite effective.
1/09/2007 at 13:21