Community Service Losing its Way

Last weeks ITV 'Tonight' programme on Community Service - sorry Community Payback - was a huge embarrassment for the unfortunate services involved, showing as it did examples of offenders basically 'tossing it off'. Sadly though this would not come as a great surprise to most probation officers. I think CS lost its way ages ago due to cutbacks and sheer numbers. My own Service used to have workshops including printing and enough supervisors for decorating and gardening for the elderly. Part of the ethos of CS, as originally conceived, was that of 'meaningful work', and much effort used to go into developing worthwhile projects with clear community benefit. Unfortunately this aspect, along with tailored placements for individuals to use and develop skills, was another cost saving measure. I thought it a bit rich of Louise Casey to be complaining when it was because of her that CS was forced to become more about punishment than rehabilitation in the first place. Of course this has made supervision much more difficult with attenders understandably being disgruntled with what they see as pointless tasks. Indeed in order to keep costs down, placements have to be sourced where a lot of the supervision can be provided by third parties - the massive numbers on CS dictate that teams have to be large and there is not enough work that does not break the rule that it must not replace paid workers, such as litter picking. In many ways it would possibly be fairer and more acceptable if we reverted to offenders breaking rocks and have done with any notion of rehabilitation.

In reality though I saw this programme as a 'put up job' by the dreadful Louise Casey helping to discredit the probation service and assist the case for privatisation. Of course she was a political appointment of the Labour government that forced all probation service's to become Trusts as a prelude to removing whole chunks of work and giving it to private companies and charitable bodies. My guess is that CS will be in the front line for this treatment as part of the new coalition governments wide ranging spending review due out next month.