Community sentences should receive funding in parity with prison places

£5.5m bid to speed up community service. The Herald, 24 June 2009 >> article

VIEWPOINT: The government’s pledge to increase funding for community service orders is a welcome one but significant additional funding must be made available to implement the new community payback orders.

Although this extra £5.5 million will go some way to improving the situation, it seems only intended to ease the current problems in implementing community service orders by clearing the backlog and speeding up the process. It is evident that the current system is too cumbersome and inadequately resourced – a situation recently highlighted by a case in Aberdeen where an offender was shown to have completed only two hours of a 280 hour sentence after seven months.

The government’s new community payback orders are intended to replace the current system by offering sentencers a viable and effective way of dealing with offenders currently being given custodial sentences of six months or less.

If these new sentences are to attract the support of the courts and the public, they will have to be applied robustly. That means they must take place as soon as possible after sentencing and must be completed in full. With over 80% of the prison population being given short custodial sentences, it is obvious that authorities will be faced with a significant number of cases to be processed. It is therefore imperative that proper funding is put in place to implement the new system.

Community disposals such as these are widely acknowledged to be an effective way of reducing reoffending whilst offering a benefit to the community and those harmed by an offence. As such, they must be applied seriously and demand funding in parity with custodial sentences.

This is a rare opportunity to make significant inroads in dealing with the “revolving door” of offending and reoffending in our communities. These sentences must receive the resources they require or we risk a return to ineffective custodial sentences, overcrowded prisons and a more dangerous society in Scotland.