The Future of Community Penalties
Rob Canton 1

This paper will begin by offering a definition of community penalties and giving somespecific examples of the form that they take. While countries have different community
penalties, there are some that are common to many different nations and indeed thechallenges of policy and implementation are often much the same. The origins of probationand community punishment in England and Wales will be briefly discussed: although ourconcern here is with the future, this cannot be properly explored without due attention to thepast and the present. The paper will go on to raise some questions about the purpose (orpurposes) of community penalties and the extent to which these can be achieved. There will
be a brief consideration of new technologies, the difference these are making both to thenature and to perceptions of practice. Before some final reflections on the likely futures ofcommunity penalties in England and Wales and indeed in Europe, the paper will set out someof the strengths and weaknesses of community penalties, the opportunities for positive
development and some of the obstacles and threats.

What are community penalties
The Council of Europe 1992 Rules on Community Sanctions and Measures 2 offer thefollowing definition:
The term ‘community sanctions and measures’ refers to sanctions and measures
which maintain the offender in the community and involve some restriction of his
liberty through the imposition of conditions and / or obligations, and which are
implemented by bodies designated in law for that purpose. The term designates
any sanction imposed by a court or a judge, and any measure taken before or
instead of a decision on a sanction as well as ways of enforcing a sentence ofimprisonment outside a prison establishment.
1

Professor in Community and Criminal Justice, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
If there is a distinction to be made between sanctions and measures and, on the other hand, penalties, it is not
relevant for the purposes of this paper.

2

1

The Council dislikes the very common expression alternatives to custody, incidentally,
because it seems to imply that prison is the usual and standard case – the starting point, as it
were, so that other sanctions have to prove their worth by the standards of prison. In its Rules,
Europe regards prison as a last resort.
While it can be readily agreed that community penalties take place outside of prison,should the expression mean more than this? Should the community be involved somehow?
How? These are topics to which we shall return. These penalties are very common in many
countries, although they do not often receive as much attention as prison in the academic
literature. In the first decade of this century, there were more than twice as many people on
probation or parole in America as there were in prison. In Europe it has been estimated thatsome 2 million people are in prison while about 3.5 million are subject to some form ofcommunity sanctions. Again, very many people in prison go on to spend some time subject
to community measures like parole.

Some examples of community penalties
While the term penalty implies a punishment for an offence, we may also wish toconsider related measures. For example, many countries have bail systems so that people do
not have to be held in police custody or in prison when they are awaiting trial at court.
Alternatives to pre-trial detention include such measures as requiring a suspected offender toreside at a specified address, to be supervised and assisted by an agency specified by ajudicial authority. This is not a punishment, because punishment may not be imposed upon
people unless and until they are found guilty. Another measure that should be mentioned isconditional release from prison followed by post-release supervision – often known as parole.
In some countries, this is not regarded as punishment in itself – rather as a protective or2

preventive measure that follows the punishment of imprisonment, but many of the samepractice challenges arise.
Here are some examples of community penalties. In many countries, a probation
order is used as an independent sanction. This typically involves keeping in regular (though
not necessarily frequent) contact with a representative of the probation service. Sometimes
courts order a suspended term of imprisonment and at the same time imposes conditions withwhich the individual offender must comply. Treatment orders for drug or alcohol misusing
offenders and those suffering from a mental disturbance that is related to their criminal
behaviour are also used in many countries. There may be more intensive supervision for
appropriate categories of offenders. There are also penalties that restrict the individual’s
freedom of movement by means of, for example, curfew orders or electronic monitoring.
Community service (i.e. unpaid work on behalf of the community) is extremely common in
Europe. Victim compensation / reparation / victim-offender mediation is less common, but of
increasing interest for many reasons, as we shall see.

Probation in England and Wales
Probably the oldest and best known community punishment is the probation order.
There is a legend about probation’s origins in England. A man called Frederic Rainer visited
the London Police Courts in 1876 and, dismayed by what he saw, wrote a letter to a Societyof the Church of England in which he asked; “Offence after offence and sentence after
sentence appear to be the inevitable lot of him whose foot has once slipped. Can nothing bedone to arrest the downward career?” His letter is a defiant statement, expressing hopeagainst pessimism, his belief in the possibility of change and rejecting the inevitability ofincessant crime and punishment. Rainer wanted to reject never-ending punishment with a
response to wrong-doing that respects dignity, decency and affirms a belief in the possibility3

of change. As it seems to me, Rainer was especially urging the ethical importance of giving
people a fair chance to change. These are ethical and expressive values – by which I meanthat we should be interested not only in what probation does but about what it says andrepresents in and through its work. The result of Rainer’s letter was to introduce a small
number of ‘Police Court Missionaries’ who attended court and offered, in suitable cases, tohelp individual offenders where the courts felt there was such a need and a reasonable
opportunity to make a difference. These early probation officers gave practical help and used
the influence of their personalities to bring about change. (I suspect that they would have
immediately understood the ethos of probation volunteers in Japan.) When, thirty years later,these practices were formalised in law, probation was to be instead of punishment inappropriate cases. And what this was especially rejecting – though only in suitable cases –was corporal punishment, fines (which people often couldn’t afford to pay) and prison.
Since then, probation in England has gone through a number of phases in which it has
understood its work in different ways and attempted to present it accordingly to courts and to
the public. The table below sets this out.

Phases of probation in England

Approximate dates•

helping people to change•- 1930s•

rehabilitative treatment•

1930 – 1970s•‘nothing works’•Mid 1970s•

alternatives to custody•

Late 1970s - 1980s•

punishment in the community•

Late 1980s – 1990s•

what works?

•

Late 1990s•

public protection; offendermanagement•

To date4

This is too simple, of course (for a bit more detail and for further references, Canton2011). Ways of working and of presenting work carry on and are never quite displaced by
new ideas or methods. But roughly this sets out probation’s objectives over the years.
Helping was often very practical – for instance helping people to find a job or somewhere to
live, perhaps trying to mend relationships with their families - but there was also the idea thata strong personality - perhaps a parent figure or an older brother or sister - can help to bringabout change. Then followed a more scientific understanding – the use of some psychological
techniques (especially counselling) to rehabilitate. In the mid-1970s, however, there wasfound to be a shortage of evidence that any particular form of intervention worked to reduce
reoffending. In UK, for example, Brody wrote:
It has seemed … that longer sentences are no more effective than short ones, thatdifferent types of institutions work about equally as well, that probationers on thewhole do no better than if they were sent to prison, and that rehabilitative
programmes … have no predictably beneficial effects. (1976: 37)
But if probation could not show itself to be better at reducing reconviction than othertypes of punishment, at least it was no worse and in particular it could provide a lessdamaging and cheaper alternative to prison. Meanwhile, as the issue of crime and punishment
became more and more political – an area in which political parties competed - there was aperception that the public demanded punishment. Community penalties were considered to be
too easy or lenient and probation was challenged to make them more demanding. This was a
crucial step: probation and other community penalties were no longer to be instead ofpunishment but punishment in their own right. Whether or not the courts and the public saw
them in this way is another matter.
Towards the end of the 1980s, research from North America challenged thepessimism that nothing worked very well. New research seemed to show that some methods
do work (I shall say more about this later) and a new period in English probation was basedon these claims. But meanwhile the increasing political priority came to be the management
5and reduction of risk and these new concerns came to dominate policy and practice. Thisdigression into probation’s history in England is a reminder that the purposes that people set
for probation – and the way in which it is understood - change. Over time, the kinds ofcommunity punishments available have changed and different purposes have been set forthem.
One of the most important community penalties was first introduced in England in1972. Community service is a community penalty which involves offenders working without
payment for the benefit of the community as real or symbolic reparation for the harms theircrimes have caused. Over the years this has become a very common punishment in almost all
European countries. But it is a good example of the difficulties involved in trying to specify aparticular single purpose for a community penalty. For example, some have argued that
community service should be regarded as a punishment because it takes away people’s time,labour and skill. Others insist that the work itself should be tough – it ought to be hard labourand nothing easy. But it can also be a form of rehabilitation – because giving people usefulthings to do enables them to develop their skills and interests and, at best, enables them todevelop useful work habits and a more considerate attitude to others. It makes amends – byundertaking useful work offenders can really begin to pay the community back for the harmthey had done. Some feel that the tasks assigned to offenders should in some way emphasisesocial inclusion. Having several different purposes – and purposes that may not always
easily fit together – is very typical of community punishment in general. It is rare that apenalty has just one purpose, but if there are a number of purposes hard questions arise: arethe several purposes compatible? (can they all be pursued?) are some purposes more
important than others?

6Probation objectives in Europe

Nowadays different countries set one or more of the following objectives forcommunity penalties. It is to be noted that these are different objectives and evaluation of
their success would therefore need different indicators.
•

To reduce prison numbers by providing alternative sentences•

To protect the public by controlling offenders in the community•

To reduce reconviction through rehabilitation•

Reparation and mediation
We shall have a look at these objectives one by one in more detail.

Reduce prison numbers by providing alternatives to custodyThis could be done either by sending fewer people to prison and instead imposing
community penalties (‘closing the front door’) or by early release schemes like parole underwhich prisoners would be supervised after leaving prison (‘opening the back door’). (Or byboth methods, of course.) But community penalties have been disappointing in their effects inthis respect. They do not seem to reduce the prison population and may not even much slow
down its increase. Rather than displacing people from custody, they just draw more people
into a net and subject them to increased levels of intervention. In most European countries,
large numbers of people subject to community punishments are offenders who would
probably not otherwise have gone to prison, but would have been dealt with in other ways –by financial penalties, warnings, other community penalties (Aebi et al 2015). And many of
those early released from prison are then recalled for violations of their conditional release.
The judgement has been taken that the public will only tolerate early release if they can beassured that there will be tight enforcement and that any violation will lead to a recall to7

prison. In UK, this has led to large numbers being received back into prison. In USA, thistendency has been even more marked. In 2006, almost 2/3 of all prison admissions in
California were parole violations and many of them were technical. (See Robinson, McNeill
and Maruna 2013). And of course once someone has been seen to ‘fail’ on parole, authorities
will often be most reluctant to give them another chance. The general message is clear.
Community penalties are not an efficient means of reducing the prison population. They havecontributed to some successes in certain countries (Lappi‐Seppälä 2007), but many countries,
especially in eastern Europe where there is often a legacy of high prison populations fromtheir Soviet days, have discovered that establishing a probation service and creating a rangeof community penalties will not solve this problem on its own.
Protect the public by controlling offenders in the community

Public protection is political priority in many countries. There are examples ofarrangements where high risk offenders have been managed safely in the community.
England and Wales is very proud of its Multi-agency public protection arrangements(MAPPA) under which several agencies, usually led by the police and by the probation
service, work together combining their skills and resources to guard against serious offendingby dangerous people. These achievements must not be under-estimated. But here too there isa challenge of credibility. The public only becomes aware of public protection when things
go wrong – a serious crime takes place and arrangements are judged to have failed. Even
when inquiry shows that probation and other agencies have done everything possible, there is
still often political criticism and calls for changes to be made. Can community punishment
ever match the certainty in protection that imprisonment seems to offer?
Reduce reconviction through rehabilitation

8

The pessimistic idea that nothing works was challenged by research findings,
especially from Canada and USA, that some kinds of programme were successful in reducing
reconviction after all. These successful programmes focused onRisks - the higher the risk of reoffending, the more intensive and extended thesupervision programme should be. This principle can accordingly be used todetermine who should be worked with and to what level.

Needs - the focus of intervention must be on those needs or factors associated with
their offending. These are known as criminogenic needs 3.

Responsivity – ‘ensuring that all interventions, programmes and activities withoffenders are run in a way which is engaging, encourages full participation and takes
account of issues of identity and diversity.’ (Dominey 2007)

and were

Multi-modal (different methods / skills) - offenders’ problems are diverse, calling fora correspondingly diverse repertoire of interventions.



Delivered as intended (programme integrity) – supporters of RNR claimed that where
results were disappointing this may be because they had not been implemented
appropriately (Andrews and Bonta 2010)Community based - Programmes in the community were said to be more effective
than those undertaken in prisons.
It was claimed that programmes – sequenced and structured interventions – could

reduce reoffending below the predicted rates by measurable amounts and these insights were
the basis of English policy for probation in the late 1990s and the early years of this century.
There were ambitious claims made when these programmes were developed in UK, but they3

These differ from person to person, of course, but common needs include: pro-criminal attitudes(‘thoughts, values and sentiments supportive of criminal behaviour’); pro-criminal associates; employment;poor personal relationships; substance abuse (drugs, alcohol) (Andrews and Bonta 2010: 46).
9

have not, perhaps, fulfilled the whole of their promise. Assessing the achievements of these
programmes after 20 years of experience in England, it could be said that:•

Some things work quite well – if conditions are optimal•Some things work in one context but not another e.g. perhaps they work in thecommunity but not so well in prison•

Some things work with some people but not others – for example, perhaps they work
quite well with men, but less so with women; or they work well with younger people,
but not so well with older•

Programmes must be well-designed and targeted at those who are ready to change•

Programmes must be completed and must be followed up by probation staff
It is to be noted that by far the most usual form of community supervision in Europe

remains 1:1 supervision (rather than group work) and undertaken in a fairly unsystematic way.
While this is the most common arrangement, very little is known about how probation staff
undertake this work and, for example, whether some approaches are more successful thanothers.
Whatever the value of programmes of intervention, most countries are fully awarethat prisoners (and people subject to community punishments) experience huge social
disadvantage. A UK government report found:Compared with the general population, prisoners are thirteen times as likely tohave been in care as a child 4, thirteen times as likely to be unemployed, tentimes as likely to have been a regular truant from school, two and a half times as
likely to have had a family member convicted of a criminal offence, six times as
likely to have been a young father, and fifteen times as likely to be HIV positive.
Many prisoners’ basic skills are very poor. 80 % have writing skills, 65 %numeracy skills and 50 % reading skills at or below the level of an 11-year-old.
60 to 70 % of prisoners were using drugs before imprisonment. Over 70 % sufferfrom at least two mental disorders. And 20 % of male and 37 % of female
sentenced prisoners have attempted suicide in the past. The position is often evenworse for 18–20-year-olds, whose basic skills, unemployment rate and school

4

In care means brought up in a children’s home or a foster family
10exclusion background are all over a third worse than those of older prisoners.
(Social Exclusion Unit 2002: 6, emphasis in original).
It is plausible to link these disadvantages with their offending and unless their life
chances are improved, further offending is likely to result. Even if their attitudes and thinking
can be changed by probation interventions, they need fair opportunities to develop lawful
ways of living – lives in which offending has no place.
The report particularly identified the importance of the following factors in
influencing further offending or desistance:•

accommodation•

education, training and employment;•

health•drugs and alcohol•

finance, benefits and debt•

children and families•

attitudes, thinking and behaviour
It seems likely that many countries would report a similar experience, even if theywould add or subtract from this list and perhaps give a different emphasis to some of thesefactors. Given this wide range of social needs, it made sense for probation to work with otheragencies of civil society. There are other organisations whose task it is to help people who arehomeless, help them to find employment, offer drug treatment and so on. Rather than try tocreate these services within the probation agency, it would be better to work with these otherorganisations to make sure that offenders have fair and reasonable access to the services
available to other citizens. In England, these insights have transformed the way in which
probation goes about its work and the expression ‘offender management’ is now commonly
used. This has given its name to modern English probation – which is part of a National

11

Offender Management Service. At its best, this represents the idea of social inclusion andmeans that community punishment is more than just punishment-outside-prison.
Yet it has also been emphasised that, without a guiding relationship, offendermanagement is likely to be uncoordinated, confusing (especially for the offender in the
middle of these often complex arrangements) and fragmented. Listening to what offenders
themselves say about their experience of being supervised has returned attention to theimportance of this working relationship. A relationship – based on trust and mutual respect –turns out from research to be every bit as important as the particular treatment methodfavoured. Without a relationship none of these benefits is likely to be achieved. Again, thesimilarity to the role of Japanese VPOs is apparent.
To summarise findings about rehabilitation: the predominant model of rehabilitationin Europe and North America is Risks-Needs-Responsivity. But the insights of desistanceresearch – finding out more about the circumstances in which people come to stop offending– have emphasised that there is not only a need for personal change – change, that is, in theattitudes and motivation of offenders – but also in the opportunities available to them.
Typically people stop offending by establishing ways of living in which offending has noplace, where they come to see themselves not as offenders but as workers, perhaps, ashusbands and wives, as parents and are regarded in this way by other people as well. In otherwords, they come to lead to good lives. But not everyone has the same understanding of whata ‘good life’ is and offenders must be allowed to flourish as they decide. Rehabilitative
methods like RNR emphasise weaknesses and limitations – risks and needs – but more
attention should be paid to offenders’ strengths, their potential and their own ambitions.
These ‘positive’ goals constitute more powerful motivation than the aversive goals associatedwith risks and needs. Probation can support these developments but cannot and should not try
to lead them.

12Reparation and Mediation

Attention to the needs and rights of victims has prompted many probation agencies tointroduce into their policies and practices ways of working with and for victims. In many
parts of the north and west of Europe, this has proved quite difficult as well-establishedagencies, created to work with offenders, have tried to work out how to add on – or, better, tointegrate – work with victims. Newer services in Eastern Europe have managed this better,
perhaps, and Romania and – especially – the Czech Republic have developed their new
services with a full understanding of the importance of working with victims. The Czech
Probation Service is named the Probation and Mediation Service. These are the guiding
principles of working in this way.
•

the response to crime should repair as much as possible the harm suffered by thevictim;•offenders should be brought to understand that their behaviour has had realconsequences for the victim and the community;•

offenders can and should accept responsibility for their action;•

victims should have an opportunity to express their needs and to participate indetermining the best way for the offender to make reparation;•

the community has a responsibility to contribute to this process. (Czech Republic
Probation and Mediation Service 2013).
Traditional justice represents the relationship between the state and the offender.

Reparation considers the offender and the victim, but at best goes further than this. The
community – at a local rather than a national level – has an interest and a responsibility inresponding to crime – in supporting the victim, holding the offender to account, trying to13

bring it about that the offender does not offend again. And as we have seen this involves not
only personal change, but also opportunities. One obvious example is employment. It is wellestablished that being employed is a very strong influence in avoiding further offending, but
if employers take the view that they will not employ offenders because they are
untrustworthy, then this ‘pathway’ out of crime can be blocked. Reparative approaches havethe potential to enable communities to see that a crime could be interpreted as a sign ofsomething wrong in society and a challenge to see how it can be put right – not only for thisoffender but to avoid offending by others.

New technologies

Probation in Europe and in North America has been influenced in its work by newelectronic technologies. Most obviously, the emphasis on case recording and the inputting ofdata onto computers leads many probation staff in England to complain that they spend much
more of their working time staring at a screen and typing at a keyboard than in meeting withoffenders or victims. The capacity to build and analyse large data sets has led to a mode of‘actuarial’ criminal justice where offenders are dealt with not as individuals but as membersof groups. There are also other technologies that have the potential to transform probation
practice. This seems, in Europe and North America at least, to make a difference to ourthinking about the future of community penalties.
Electronic monitoring is widely used. At the moment, in UK, this mostly takes theform of a device fitted to the individual’s ankle that communicates with another device
attached to their home telephone. This is how curfews 5 are monitored. If the offender is awayfrom home, the monitoring centre will receive an alert and as soon as possible someone willattend the premises to find out what is going on. Note that while this device can report an5

A curfew is a requirement to remain at home at certain hours, usually and especially at night time.
14

absence, it cannot tell you where the offender is (if away from the appointed place).
Increasingly, this technology is looking likely to be replaced by GPS technology, using
satellites to locate the offender – just like cell phones. Exclusion zones could be monitored inthis way. For example, an offender might be ordered to stay away from a particular area andthe GPS tracking device would be able to monitor this.
There are plenty of other devices besides. These include devices that detect thepresence of alcohol through a deep lung breath sample. The results are transmitted remotely
through a telephone connection. Test results are matched against a highly reliable biometricvoiceprint to make sure that it is the offender (and not their sober friend!) who is blowing into
the tube. At the start of a programme, subjects are visited to set up the system and the voiceverification process is explained to them. An initial voice recording is taken from the subject,which is used as a blueprint for all future communication by telephone. Manufacturers claim“Our technology enables us to check the unique voice of the subject against our recorded andstored version each and every time the subject calls through.”
In London there has been an experiment to allow offenders released from prison andthose serving community penalties to report to electronic kiosks rather than to probation
officers. Some people would like this to be extended. Offenders will log into the machines,
located in probation service offices, using fingerprints. Biometric reporting, as it is known, isused in the US, where the machines interact with large numbers of offenders. The machines
ask offenders a series of questions, including whether they have changed their address or job
and if they have been arrested since their last report or wish to speak to someone. Probation
service managers will also be able to add individually tailored questions to those asked by themachines, which are believed to cost around £130,000 a year to operate. (23,348,433 Yen;
$ 191,000). Whether this is considered expensive depends on judgements about how muchprobation officer time they might be able to replace.

15

Technology brings both opportunities and threats. Will technology add to or replace
the personal relationship? The Council of Europe prefers electronic monitoring to be used tosupport conventional probation supervision. But maybe some offenders would prefer animpersonal intervention. There is some evidence (Nellis 2010) that electronic monitoring canhave some rehabilitative benefits – by bringing some structure and discipline into people’s
lives - but it is not promoted to the general public or marketed in this way so much as asurveillance / control device. A personal worry is that the involvement of commercial firms
in the manufacture of these devices, and often in their deployment, will have the effect ofgreater and greater use and lead to an expansion of penal control. Perhaps the most importantmessage is that we must make sure that we use technology to support our work – technology
should not lead it and we should not do things just because we can.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

Before moving finally to consider the future of community penalties, it will be useful
to look at their strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities they present and the threats ofwhich we must be aware.
Strengths
Here are some of the conspicuous strengths of community penalties.
•

Avoiding the negative effects of prison.

•

Potential to support desistance – people have to learn to stop offending in thecommunity. Prison cannot bring this about. It has been said that you cannot teachsomeone to live responsibly in freedom by locking them up.

•

Flexibility – several types of intervention can be combined to meet the diverse needs
and circumstances of offenders.

16•

Relative financial costs – in principle, community penalties cost society much lessthan imprisonment.

•

Represent the belief that people can change – the hope that Rainer expressed.

•

Try to promote social inclusion. The prison wall ‘says’ you are apart, not one of us.
Community penalties try to convey a very different message.

•

Encourage communities to take responsibilities towards (ex)offenders and probation
can advise how to do this. (Japanese probation seems to do this very well. “Themission of all volunteer probation officers shall be, in the spirit of volunteer social
service, to assist persons who have committed crimes and juvenile delinquents toimprove and rehabilitate themselves, and to enlighten the public on crime
prevention, thereby enhancing the local community and contributing to thewelfare of both individuals and the public. (Art. 1, VPOs Act)” (Minoura –emphasis added)

Weaknesses
On the other hand, community penalties have a number of weaknesses.
•

They are not easy to explain to courts and to the public.

•

They do not always look like a sufficient punishment.

•

It is hard to find good evidence that community penalties achieve their objectives.

•

Community involvement is often limited – ‘community’ often means no more than‘not in prison’.

Opportunities•

Community penalties challenge the automatic assumption that punishment must
involve prison.

17•

If used well, community penalties can contribute to reducing the numbers of people inprison. Community penalties have had no more than limited success in lowering
prison populations, as we have seen, but unless these sanctions exist and are welldeveloped, prosecutors and courts will have fewer options•

Community penalties can help a community in recognising its responsibilities in
reducing and responding to crime.

•

Help to bring it about that offenders have genuine access to services available to therest of the community – “VPOs, as liaisons between offenders and their communities,
are the key individuals to facilitate this sense of acceptance by the community as wellas the rehabilitation of offenders.” (Minoura)•

Greater participation of victims – who are often overlooked entirely in some criminal
justice systems.

•

Potential to solve problems rather than avoid them – prison avoids or postpones
problems. Community penalties can attempt to solve them. 6

Threats•

Community penalties have often drawn more people into the processes of control andpunishment rather than displacing them from prison.

•

The increasing involvement of commercial and technology could lead to expansion.

•

There is a risk that community penalties will be valued only as a device for reducing
the numbers in prison not for their own intrinsic worth.

6

The concept of ‘community justice’ is of relevance here. It has been said that this rests on three principles:“First, the community is the ultimate consumer of criminal justice. Rather than offenders, or even victims, it iscommunities that the system ought to serve. Second, community justice is achieved in partnership at the local
level. Third, it is problem focused: problems are addressed rather than cases processed.” Winstone and Pakes
2005: 2)18

•

Political demands for tough punishment could make it even harder to explain thevalue of community penalties to a sceptical public.

•

There is a risk that if community penalties are made more demanding in an attempt toshow that they are ‘credible’ punishment, this could lead to more imprisonment (ashas happened in parts of USA). More requirements lead to more potential violations;then tight enforcement leads to more prison.

The future of community penalties

Penal policy is influenced by social, political, economic and cultural factors that canbe hard to anticipate. For example, penal policy has become much more ‘political’ in UK and
USA than it was forty years ago. It has become more punitive and it is now hard forpoliticians to change direction for fear of accusations of ‘being soft on crime’. On the other
hand, financial pressures have brought about changes in some states of the USA, succeedingin reducing prison populations where other arguments have failed. Community penalties havebeen able to adapt by being presented in different ways – as punishment, as rehabilitation, as
control. Public confidence / legitimacy is extremely important and is won by stating clearly
what you are attempting to do and then doing it well - not by making unrealistic claims about
rehabilitation or public protection.
One future for community penalties is that they will come to be seen just as means ofsurveillance and control. Political and / or public pressures will be seen to make it necessary
for community penalties to be punitive and ‘prison-like’. Increased technology might replace
the human relationships on which probation fundamentally depends and more people will bedrawn into an expanding system.
Another and better future might be this. Community penalties could be used to place
an emphasis on social inclusion and to support opportunities for desistance. Crime can be19regarded and used as an opportunity for the community to reflect on what is going wrong andto try to work out how arrangements might be improved. Japan again offers this vision ofcommunity involvement.
In order to promote public awareness of the importance of offender rehabilitation,
improve social environments and engage communities in the prevention of crime,
various activities are carried out in local communities by VPOs. These activities
include street parades, small symposia for local citizens, video forums in school,
essay competitions and displaying posters. VPOs conduct these crime prevention
activities in cooperation with municipal governments, community citizens, policeand other volunteer groups. Through these activities, local communities promotebonds in the community, and as a result, those efforts build safer and stronger
communities. (Minoura)

Finally, I suggest that community penalties could be greatly enhanced by more attention to
the voice of offenders themselves. In the UK, probation areas are establishing ‘user councils’
to find out what probationers and ex-prisoners themselves find to be best and, on the other
hand, what needs to change. In UK probation has not taken these opportunities before, but isincreasingly discovering that this is an invaluable guide to policy and to practice.

References

Aebi, M., Delgrande, N. and Marguet, Y (2015) ‘Have community sanctions and measures
widened the net of the European criminal justice systems?’, Punishment & Society, 17 (5):575-597
Andrews, D. and Bonta, J. (2010) ‘Rehabilitating Criminal Justice Policy and Practice’,
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 16 (1): 39 – 55
Brody, S. (1976) The Effectiveness of Sentencing: a review of the literature, Home Office
Research Study No. 35, London: Home Office
Canton, R. (2011) Probation: Working with Offenders, Abingdon: Routledge

20Council of Europe (1992) European Rules on Community Sanctions and Measures http://tinyurl.com/qbxgvw5
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