What about the Workers?
| Author | M. Varah |
| Published date | 01 September 1981 |
| Date | 01 September 1981 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/026455058102800404 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
WHAT ABOUT THE WORKERS?
Offenders on Community Service
Orders Express their Opinions
M. Varah
SPO, Community Service, Warwickshire
Without making any claims for sophisticated research methods,
the author reports the results of a simple survey of offenders’
opinions of their community service experience. It may not be
the most respectable piece of research we’ve ever printed,
but it brings the clients’ voices clearly and significantly into
our pages.
A colourful and, at times, highly
those who successfully completed their
descriptive account of community service
orders). Clients were not asked to
from the offenders’ point of view has
identify themselves in the questionnaire
emerged from a questionnaire given to a
and it was left to them to complete and
hundred workers who passed through the
return their form to the officer. There
Warwickshire scheme between 1980 and
was therefore no element of compulsion
1981.
-all those given a questionnaire actually
Some of the offenders’ replies may at
seemed keen to air their feelings-secure
least cause you to smile, and some may
in the knowledge that they were beyond
reinforce the belief that the philosophy
our jurisdiction.
and practice of community service is
The results of the study were as
fundamentally right. For those who are
follows:
.
disenchanted with research papers or de-
Q. Would you rather have been given a
tailed statistics take heart and read on:
short prison sentence than a community
the need for simplicity guided by com-
service order?
mon sense is evident in this exercise. The
4 would have prefered a prison sentence;
96
questionnaire is not sophisticated: it
prefered their community service orders.
Q.2 Do you see community service as a
simply asks the basic questions which
’let-off’ by the court?
members of the public frequently pose.
76 did not see it as a ’let-off;
Having completed their orders, over a
24 did.
hundred clients were given question-
Q.3 Did you find community service har-
naires. The following...
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