Doing hours instead of doing time : community service orders as an alternative to incarceration

Abstract

This study was devised in the hope that when the author develops into the Social Work profession more deeply and start working with offenders, then one can try to bring the idea of community service into the environment of rehabilitation. To comprehend how community service came about, one has to start from the very beginning. Why do we incarcerate people and how do we do it ? Retribution has long been a thing of the past. We do not demand that one is to be put away and have the keys thrown away. Nowadays we look more into restorative justice as a means of redemption. Community Service Orders is only one of the few ways in which rehabilitation is exercised. CSO has been a feasible means of rehabilitation in England and Wales for thirty years. It is not only a repertory period for the offender, but also to communities and societies in general. But what would be the problems in operating CSO in Malta? One has to take a lot of things into consideration to justify the need for CSO such as, is there a need at all, for such a scheme and who would be the most suitable people to run it ? There has been experimenting with CSO in the past, perhaps the future is not so distant after all, for when CSO will be passed as legislation. Another significant issue is our culture. How prepared are we to accept radical change ? If it is a matter of economy, CSO could be the right alternative to imprisonment. How would our court officials view CSO, as retribution or as restorative measure. After a deliberation on the views of the magistrates and the judge that took part in the questionnaire and the extensive literature collected about the subject, this study should then be rid of any ambiguities and uncertainties of a scheme that in Baroness Wootton's words (chairperson for the Advisory Council on the Penal System on Non-custodial Penalties in Britain) about CSO: "An opportunity . . . . for constructive activity in the form of personal service to the community .. and not as wholly negative and punitive".(Wootton 1973).