Community Payback is essentially the replacement for Community Service, also more recently called Community Punishment. Courts are given the power to sentence offenders of certain crimes to undertake between 40 and 300 hours of Community Payback. This work is unpaid and demanding work that is aimed at giving something to local communities and forcing offenders to repay the community for the wrong they have done. You can nominate a local project or vote for the project that you wish to see benefit from unpaid labour.
Community Payback Aims
The aims of the Community Payback scheme are two fold. As well as being a means to punish offenders for their crimes against community without serving a prison term, Community Payback literally forces offenders to pay the community back for the crimes hey have committed. As a local community member you have the opportunity to decide on the projects that would most benefit from a hard working, supervised, unpaid labour force.
Nominate A Local Project
Local projects can be community based or for the good of a charity or charitable organisation. Street clean ups, graffiti removal, and even painting of derelict or run down buildings can benefit the community as a whole as well as specific regions or even individual buildings and residents. As a member of your local community you now have the power to nominate or vote for the project that you believe would gain the greatest benefit and offer the most to you and your neighbours and other community members.
Community Payback History
Community Payback started in 2003 and has been growing in stature and use since that date. You may have seen offenders wearing bright orange safety jackets with Community Payback written on the back since this time and if you haven’t yet, then the chances are that you will do soon. Last year alone saw 55,000 completed projects totalling more than 6 million hours of work and estimated at £35m worth of labour at minimum wage.
Offender Selection Criteria
There is a huge variety of tasks and projects undertaken by the Community Payback scheme and because many of them require offenders to work closely within the community, it is important that safety comes first. As such, all offenders will need to meet certain criteria before they are assigned to specific tasks. An offender’s criminal and personal history are taken into account and any that do not meet the criteria required to work in the community will work under close supervision within Probation Service managed workshops.
Typical Community Projects
By visiting the website of your local Probation Service now you can nominate or vote for a local project. You can determine the type of work that is undertaken by offenders within your community and the typical types of project include graffiti removal, street clean ups, rubbish removal, gardening and repair projects, and even recycling projects. Workshop assignments tend to concentrate on fixing broken items, either for use or for resale in charity shops within the community to benefit the community.
