Community work scheme criticised

More than a third of people sentenced to community work in New Zealand last year failed to complete it - a figure which has at least one critic concerned there is something wrong with the system.

Since the community work sentence was introduced in the 2002 Sentencing Act, completion rates have been about 75%, but in the year to June 30 they dropped to 64%, figures provided by the Department of Corrections show.

Between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2008, about 20,000 of the 55,086 New Zealanders sentenced to community work failed to complete their sentence.

The majority were sent back to court to be re-sentenced, many to more community work.

Katrina Casey, general manager of the Community Probation and Psychological Services (CPPS), said the department did not know why completion rates dropped last year.

"Successful completion is influenced by a wide range of variables that are not easily quantifiable, and it is difficult to attribute the impact of any one particular factor to the overall result."

The four months to October this year, for example, had returned an 88% completion rate, she said.

Community work replaced community service and periodic detention, which was one step down from jail.

The work normally involves improvements to some aspect of a community, such as painting schools or building walking tracks in parks. It is usually carried out at weekends under the supervision of Corrections staff.

Under the sentence, offenders are required to complete between 40 and 400 hours of unpaid work as reparation for their crimes.

Annual non-completion rates of between 20% and 25% have been common since the sentence was introduced.

To have a drop to 36% was significant, said Alan Monk, a researcher with the Sensible Sentencing Trust and former police officer.

"Really, something fundamental has gone wrong."

Offenders' attitudes to community work had changed since community-based sentencing was reviewed.

"Periodic detention was something to be scared of, because you did that and you were likely to be sent to jail . . . now you get too many chances."

The system had to give people fewer chances before offenders would take it seriously, Mr Monk said.

"Giving them too many chances is communicating an easy-as-you-go attitude. It should be that if they don't comply with their sentence, bang, they're inside, they're finished.

"Community-based sentences were introduced to give the offender a chance. If he doesn't take that chance, the full weight of the system should come into play."

If a person does not not turn up to serve community work, depending on the circumstances, enforcement action begins with reminders and verbal warnings, escalating to written warnings and, ultimately, court action.

The proportion of people prosecuted for breaching community work has remained about 25% despite the number of people sentenced to community work increasing by nearly 10,000 people over the past three years.

Dunedin-Invercargill CPPS area manager Monique Cunningham said completion and breach rates did not match up because some people were re-sentenced, imprisoned or sentenced for other offences, or completed community work sentences after enforcement action was taken.

The most recent Ministry of Justice figures show that of 7398 people sentenced for breaching community work in 2006, most (3763) were convicted and discharged, 2450 were given more community work and 668 were jailed.

The rest were fined or had their sentences deferred.

 

 

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