A Working Sketch of a Community Service Session
| Published date | 01 December 1983 |
| Author | Antony Vass |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058303000411 |
| Date | 01 December 1983 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A
Working Sketch of a Community
Service Session
Antony Vass
Department of Social Work, Middlesex
Polytechnic.
A
unique account of the realities of a Community Service work
session, based on lengthy participant observation. The author
highlights how justice is negotiated between offender and
supervisor, deviance is absorbed and pragmatic adjustments
made.
In numerous publications about community
community service in one area of the Probation
service nothing has yet been written about the day-
Service. Every Sunday during nine months in 1979
to-day organisation of the court order. Little is
was spent performing a variety of community
known, even in a rudimentary way, of the
service tasks in the company of offenders under the
arrangements, activities and relations ’on site’.
supervision of the Probation Service or, on
With the exception of workers who are directly
occasion, under the supervision of recipients of the
involved in the daily organisation of community
service. The tasks varied from cutting trees,
service tasks, few probation officers know what
burning leaves and rubbish, to constructing a
community service entails in practice.
children’s playground, assisting at old people’s
This article’ aims at filling the gap, at least in
homes and helping mentally retarded children at
part, by providing a working sketch of a day in the
a local hospital.
life of a community service session. It depicts the
major organisational aspects of community ser-
If the offender demonstrates a negative
vice : from the moment the first supervisors and
attitude or
offenders begm
expresses disagreement, the
to arrive at the community service
officer’s
office
responses become fairly
to report for work, to the final administrative
abrasive.
preoccupations of the organiser at the end of the
day. It must be emphasised that the documentation
is only a crude sketch which lacks substantive detail
In the course of my involvement in community
and expresses a certam degree of rigidity m the
service tasks I was treated as an ’offender’. I was
timetables portrayed; its essence is to act as a
mstructed to carry out particular tasks and my
general framework of the day-to-day organisa-
work, with a few exceptions, was rated and hours
tional events that take place in the performance of
were
credited in the same manner in which super-
tasks. As
such, the sketch offers an opportunity for
visors rated and credited offenders’ work perfor-
comparisons to be made with other community
mance. Rather than achieving access covertly, I
service schemes across the country and, to identify
introduced myself to participants as a person
common
characteristics or the degree of variation
interested in community service and that I would
or deviation that may exist between schemes.
like to know
more
about it by actually participating
with them in their tasks and sharing their
Method of Study
experience.
The sketch derives from my own experiences of
It is often argued that the usual justification for
community service as a participant observer. This
choosing to work covertly is that the data sought
entailed the actual completion of 220 hours of
could not have been available to the open field-
148
worker or that if it were known by those being
in order to gauge the reactions of the offender in
studied, they would behave differently m
some
way
respect of his interests, skills, preferences or
or
another. At least in my
experiences, both grounds
motmation. Quite often at this stage the exchange
for choosing to work by guile proved quite un-
leads to a mutual agreement about a suitable
founded and, mdeed, unjustified.
placement. However, though the offender may be
given a vague idea where he might be placed, the
After the Court Order
officer controls the situation by informing the
offender that further
Once
changes may be necessary and
an order is made, the court duty officer
that wntten instructions will be issued to him
about
furnished the offender with a letter confirmmg the
suitable
order made
and instructing him to
placements and reporting times.
report for inter-
mew
with the community service organiser (or his
Allocation
assistant).
Following the interview, the officer finalises
Interview
arrangements for the offender to be placed in a
At the interview the officer explains and
project. The organiser makes a list of offenders for
reiterates the requirements of a community service
each available project (thus he creates a ’work
order. He reminds the offender that he had con-
party’) and briefs his supervisors about the allo-
sented to the order and that the order is a contract.
cation...
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