Along with a variety of other means of alternative sentencing, probation community service, is one of the most often ordered by criminal courts as a part or all of the sentencing for a particular crime. Courts use this means of rendering to offer offenders less prison time (or no prison time at all), as well as to keep prison populations down. Below, we will review the definition and nature of probation community service, and well as the micro and macro purposes it fulfills for the offender, courts, and community as a whole.
Community service is best characterized as a means of alternative sentencing that offers the criminal a more convenient sentence, and the community free labor. Most all court jurisdictions can rule for community service to be served by its defendants-excepting federal courts. This is not to say that no community service can be used for sentencing of federal crimes; just that it is much much less common to crimes of this severity.
The term, community service, defined, is “unpaid work by an offender for a civic or nonprofit organization”. The best examples of institutions in which offenders are sentenced to serve a set number of hours are: senior citizen centers, recycling centers, libraries, soup kitchens, conservation programs, and like kind establishments that offer service to a underprivileged group. In whatever program or center the offender is sentenced to as determined by the court, the standard practice is the same: he/she must fulfill a certain amount of service hours to the facility within a certain amount of time. If it applies, the court may order that instead of hours as a quantifier for time served, that a task be completed.
When it comes to community service, there are, of course, more purposes to ultimately fulfill than just to cut down on overpopulation in prisons and offer criminal more lenient sentencing. On a much larger scale, the purposes behind this alternative sentencing are many fold, to include: criminal punishment, reparation to the victim and community, financial restitution, and rehabilitation from crime. All of these aspects of community service should be purposed in the role of a community service program.
Typically, while the court sentencing a person probation may be the one to order that community service be a part of his/her sentencing, it is most often the case, that the probation officer assigned the case and criminal, be the one to choose the specifics of what sort of program they are committed to. The nature of their crime is of course, taken into consideration, as well as their criminal history and demeanor; to find the best fit for the community program and/or facility that they will be serving as a part of their sentence. Moreover, it is the role of the probation officer to meet with both the nonprofit and the offender to ensure that both parties are aware of their expectations-the offender to complete their civic duty, and the agency to supervise and offer “suitable work” to the offender. Overall, the offender must be a good match to the agency, and the type of service needed there must be in line with the type of court sentencing given the probationary criminal.