Looks like I am first past the post!! Bystander I agree with your comments, although the LCJ managed a day out working on a project (perhaps he has more influence than us). If the public and police are ever to regard CP as a viable option to prison then it must be seen to work. CP should be high profile - including orange jump suits - and be demanding. It should not be done with a "when I have the time" attitude.
Probation in my area don't allow a "when I have the time attitude" they bring back breaches to court extremely quickly and I am not convinced about the cost implications of the orange suits...
Have a look at the BBC report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/72.../uk/
7218310.stm
It actually mentions the P word "punishment". As if this notion still exits with the criminal justice system,.
This has become the most un-politically correct word with the liberal elite that run the justice these days.
It just doesn’t do well for someone’s career progression you see.
If only the public knew!
PCM you are such a sourpuss! If ever I am up in the Midlands I would be delighted to buy you a consolatory beer.
Back on thread, I have to say that my experience with the Probation Service is that they can be quite remarkable, skilled and dedicated people. Unlike Bystander, I have enjoyed a couple of visits to Community Projects and have been impressed with the discipline I have witnessed.
Many of us involved in the Justice system seem to enjoy a certain enhanced status as a by-product (whether we seek it or not). Even the Police - as recent coverage of their pay-claim has shown - are generally looked up to by the public. Sadly the same is not true - in my opinion - of the Probation Service, whose true work and value goes, I suspect, unrecognised and under-valued by most people.
It would be good if this were to change, but I doubt it will happen in the short-term.
You have to visit probation as part of your initial core training (and a a prison) on my Bench so I'm surprised you've found it so hard to arrange a visit, reading between the lines of the report (and other things mentioned here and elsewhere) it would appear that London's probation service has significant problems so perhaps this explains it.
"the best way to give that will be to fund them properly and then leave them alone "
That's what we'd all like, isn't it ? To be given a lot of other people's money and not asked to account for it !
A workable system of punishment is essential to justice. I don't see why the sentence requires "the administration of".
As for the phrase "in the community", isn't that a matter for debate? I would probably agree as I feel that public ridicule is appropriate as a sanction and is probably far more effective than (modern) prison. But then it's probably "cruel and unusual".
Soddingmotherhood - you are lucky to live in such an area. By all accounts this seems to be a reasonably regular round the country. Regarding cost effectiveness of orange suits - with all the billions thrown away by government daily this is a drop in the ocean.
@Canker. Community Punishments are (rightly) little to do with the ridicule of the Community, but rather they are to do with repaying a debt back to the community.
I suspect that this - rather than a desire to return to the stocks - lies behind their name. I also suspect you know this.
I was being sarcastic about the orange suits but I guess that escaped you - I haven't been allowed access to Probation either and we have asked several times.
@Biker Mag
I do indeed know that this is the reason for the appalling nomenclature.
Here's a different POV:
If we are proved to have committed a crime this does not mean that we owe a debt to the community, instead it means that the community should (consider whether it should) punish us.
Why?
Firstly, as a deterrent. Punishment for breaking the law is the tail end of the virtuous cycle which always starts with maximum effort directed at crime prevention. Punishment implies that society/the community won't tolerate the breaking of the law. Anything else invites us to break the law. That punishes the community and the law-keeper.
None of this has anything to do with a debt to the community. We incur that when we live in one. Punishment is for those who, at least in part, have already demonstrated that they are unwilling to acknowledge their debt to the community.
Nothing in the above implies that mercy need be absent, or that mitigation is not appropriate. What I think it does imply is that we should look for punishment which works. The stocks (which I was not suggesting) are an interesting example. They too were not actually a punishment. The punishment was meted out (or not in some cases) in cabbages, or occasionally rocks, by other members of the community.
I don't know about anybody else, but I'm highly motivated by the (desire) for the respect of my peers-even if I wasn't, I might find public sneers both a punishment and an inducement.
A small number of law breakers may actually find solace in feeling that they've paid their debt to the community. This is fair enough, but comes a poor second to deterrence as a purpose of punishment.
Please don't start quoting stories about the activities of pickpockets at hangings. I was brought up on that stuff and it doesn't wash. Most of it relates to a time when poor people were often confronted with a choice between theft and starvation. We do not live in such a society. Our poorest individuals have greater purchasing power than all but the richest people of the seventeenth century.
Finally, punishment should be dramatic. If you don't stop someone the first time you're very unlikely to stop them later. Every reason then to make the first punishment (apparently) cruel, dramatic and unusual (and preferably, very quick and certainly not lasting in its physical effects). Instead, a first offense is almost never punished at all. The result is to bring the whole justice system into disrepute and to encourage that which it's supposed to deter: "It's quite safe, I brushed against the electric fence and nothing happened at all. Next time I'm going to urinate on it."
This is why the failure to punish is another example of soft discrimination. In many cases it's the final nail in the coffin of a fifteen year old from a "deprived background".
In my teenage years I spent some time in a children's home (my sister worked there). Most of the kids in there were very likable. I thought some were truly admirable. But I saw there the corrosive effect of the failure to punish at first hand. I saw people of my own age breaking the law in increasingly serious ways, waiting for retribution. Waiting for someone to actually care and to think that they were worth chastising. No one did, of course because they were in care. They weren't worth it. All they merited was another tired case conference. Then, at eighteen, with no skills, no one who gave a damn about them, they were chucked out by their caring social workers with no qualifications and a record of (unpunished) petty crime. What a triumph!
Sorry about the rant, but I'm so tired of hearing the same nostrums trotted out in the same oh-so-caring ways.
I've got to agree with the last post. If a youth reprimand carried a weekend in a detention center I doubt that most kids would reach the stage of final warning. I'd build specialised training facilities just catering for these first timers and have a weekend of extra English and Maths. I'd settle for a week or two of after school detention but think the first idea, though more expensive, would be worth it.
If the report is correct,then why are my clients being disproportionately picked on for breaches? Once again utter rubbish from the press
Why do you assume it will only be police officers that wince at the thought of the huge offending rates seen from those punished in the community? doesn't anyone else care? are we the only ones? please say "I can imagine victims wince" next time. It makes it more real.
Thank you Canker : that is an interesting and provocative post.
I think we disagree on the 'community' aspect though. For me, one of the glories of the (current - how long will it last?) system is that, unlike that of many countries, it IS community biased.
Those who are sentenced in a Magistrates' Court are effectively sentenced by the local community, (which magistrates are supposed to represent). If Community Orders are then imposed, then they will serve their punishment in that community and (the theory goes) add value to that community by their work.
Your other points will no doubt be addressed by wiser heads than I, but don't under-estimate the 'punishment' element of a Community Order (it is after all a very real restriction on liberty) nor its appropriateness in certain cases.
Canker and Insp Gadget,
You may be interested to read this piece in the Times by Ellie Roy, Chief Exec of the Youth Justice Board:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol...icle3264012.ece
@Biker Mag
I think actually disagreement is small! Community sounds like a good base from which/in which to consider questions of punishment and restitution. The latter is part of the legitimate idea of `debt' in relation to crime occurs. In the interests of speed I overstated my case.
@H27
Thank you for an enormously interesting reference.
What we all (tend to) bring to bear in these discussions, wherever they occur, is a large amount of agreement about aims together with a lot of noise about means (only natural on a magistrate's blog!). One of my problems (however you want to take that) is a strong impression that society has spent far too long pursuing certain failed ideas, largely because it rejected previous imperfect but effective ones.
I won't rant on a second time, but I'm sure you can see the implications (about what I think) in those statements.
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