Community Service

Community service is compulsory, free, or donated labor performed by an offender as punishment for a crime. This requirement is a community service order. An offender under a community service order must perform labor for a certain length of time (as determined by the crime) at charitable not-for-profit agencies or governmental offices. Community service involves many different types of work, both skilled and unskilled. Most work is physical in nature, such as graffiti and debris removal or outdoor maintenance. Offenders must complete the work within a certain amount of time, such as 3 months. Community service closely aligns with restitution; the offender engages in acts designed, in part, to make reparation for harm caused by the criminal offense, but these acts are directed to the larger community rather than to the victim.

The first documented community service program in the United States began in Alameda County, California, in the late 1960s, when traffic offenders who could not afford fines faced the possibility of incarceration. To avoid the financial costs of incarceration and individual costs in the lives of the offenders (who were often women with families), judges assigned physical work in the community without compensation. The idea took hold, and the use of community service expanded nationwide through the 1970s. Today, community service is a correctional option in every state and at the federal level. Because of the lack of a national survey, exact numbers of offenders with community service orders remain unknown. In Texas alone, more than 195,000 adults participated in community service in 2000.

Community service serves as a criminal sanction for adults and juveniles, males and females, felons and misdemeanants, offenders on probation, offenders in prison or jail, and offenders on parole. Most states use four models for community service. First, community service can be a sole penalty for very minor or first-time offenders, for instance, traffic violators. Second, and most commonly, community service is a special condition of probation or parole, something required of the probationer or parolee in addition to other sentence stipulations. Third, community service may replace incarceration as an intermediate sanction, usually for misdemeanants. Fourth, community service works in conjunction with incarceration, for example, when inmates form work crews removing litter from roads and other public service works.

When enforced properly, community service can serve as meaningful punishment for misbehavior while improving the quality of life in communities. To the benefit of offenders and their families, community service is less intrusive than most other sanctions, and the structured work routines may prove beneficial in the lives of offenders. Even if a community service program does not aim to treat their needs, when [Page 153]offenders remain in their communities performing unpaid labor as a criminal sanction, they are able to maintain their familial, social, and work-related responsibilities and ties. When available to replace short jail terms, especially for repeat but minor property offenders whom the system finds hard to deal with, community service sentencing may also bring relief to overcrowded jails.