THE FUTURE OF COMMUNITY PENALTIESRob Canton＊

This paper will begin by offering a definition of community penalties and giving some specific examplesof the form that they take. While countries have different community penalties, there are some that arecommon to many different nations and indeed the challenges of policy and implementation are often muchthe same. The origins of probation and community punishment in England and Wales will be briefly
discussed: although our concern here is with the future, this cannot be properly explored without due
attention to the past 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 the nature and to perceptions ofpractice. Before some final reflections on the likely futures of community penalties in England and Walesand indeed in Europe, the paper will set out some of the strengths and weaknesses of community
penalties, the opportunities for positive development and some of the obstacles and threats.

I. WHAT ARE COMMUNITY PENALTIESThe Council of Europe 1992 Rules on Community Sanctions and Measures1 offer the following definition:
The term ‘community sanctions and measures’ refers to sanctions and measures which maintain theoffender 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 of imprisonment
outside a prison establishment.
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 towhich 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 that some 2 million people are in prison while about 3.5 million are subject tosome form of community sanctions. Again, very many people in prison go on to spend some time subject
to community measures like parole.

II. SOME EXAMPLES OF COMMUNITY PENALTIES
While the term penalty implies a punishment for an offence, we may also wish to consider 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 suchmeasures as requiring a suspected offender to reside at a specified address, to be supervised and assisted
Professor in Community and Criminal Justice, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

＊

1 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.

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by an agency specified by a judicial 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 somecountries, this is not regarded as punishment in itself — rather as a protective or preventive measure that
follows the punishment of imprisonment, but many of the same practice challenges arise.
Here are some examples of community penalties. In many countries, a probation order is used as anindependent 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 with which 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 shallsee.

III. 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 Society of the Church of England in which heasked; “Offence after offence and sentence after sentence appear to be the inevitable lot of him whose foothas once slipped. Can nothing be done to arrest the downward career?” His letter is a defiant statement,
expressing hope against 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 towrong-doing that respects dignity, decency and affirms a belief in the possibility of change. As it seems tome, Rainer was especially urging the ethical importance of giving people a fair chance to change. Theseare ethical and expressive values — by which I mean that we should be interested not only in what
probation does but about what it says and represents 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 suitablecases, to help 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 theirpersonalities to bring about change. (I suspect that they would have immediately understood the ethos ofprobation volunteers in Japan.) When, thirty years later, these practices were formalised in law, probation
was to be instead of punishment in appropriate cases. And what this was especially rejecting — though
only in suitable cases — was corporal punishment, fines (which people often couldn’t afford to pay) andprison.
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

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Approximate dates⃝

helping people to change⃝– 1930s⃝

rehabilitative treatment⃝

1930 – 1970s⃝‘nothing works’⃝Mid 1970s⃝

alternatives to custody⃝

Late 1970s – 1980s⃝

punishment in the community⃝

Late 1980s – 1990s⃝

what works?

⃝

Late 1990s⃝

public protection; offender management⃝

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This is too simple, of course (for a bit more detail and for further references, Canton 2011). Ways ofworking 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 that a strong personality — perhaps a parent figure or an older brother orsister — can help to bring about change. Then followed a more scientific understanding — the use of some
psychological techniques (especially counselling) to rehabilitate. In the mid-1970s, however, there was foundto be a shortage of evidence that any particular form of intervention worked to reduce reoffending. In theUK, for example, Brody wrote:
It has seemed … that longer sentences are no more effective than short ones, that different types of
institutions work about equally as well, that probationers on the whole 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 other types of punishment, at least it was no worse and in particular it could provide a less damaging and cheaper alternative
to prison. Meanwhile, as the issue of crime and punishment became more and more political — an area inwhich political parties competed — there was a perception that the public demanded punishment.
Community penalties were considered to be too easy or lenient and probation was challenged to makethem more demanding. This was a crucial step: probation and other community penalties were no longer
to be instead of punishment 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 the pessimism that nothingworked very well. New research seemed to show that some methods do work (I shall say more about thislater) and a new period in English probation was based on these claims. But meanwhile the increasing
political priority came to be the management and reduction of risk and these new concerns came todominate policy and practice. This digression 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, thekinds of community punishments available have changed and different purposes have been set for them.
One of the most important community penalties was first introduced in England in 1972. Community
service is a community penalty which involves offenders working without payment for the benefit of thecommunity as real or symbolic reparation for the harms their crimes 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 a particular 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 hardlabour and nothing easy. But it can also be a form of rehabilitation — because giving people useful things
to do enables them to develop their skills and interests and, at best, enables them to develop useful work
habits and a more considerate attitude to others. It makes amends — by undertaking useful work offenders
can really begin to pay the community back for the harm they had done. Some feel that the tasks assigned
to offenders should in some way emphasise social inclusion. Having several different purposes — andpurposes that may not always easily fit together — is very typical of community punishment in general. It
is rare that a penalty 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 thanothers?

IV. PROBATION OBJECTIVES IN EUROPE
Nowadays different countries set one or more of the following objectives for community penalties. It is
to be noted that these are different objectives and evaluation of their success would therefore needdifferent indicators.
⿟⿟ To reduce prison numbers by providing alternative sentences
⿟⿟ To protect the public by controlling offenders in the community
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⿟⿟ To reduce reconviction through rehabilitation
⿟⿟ Reparation and mediation
We shall have a look at these objectives one by one in more detail.
A. 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 under which prisoners would be supervised
after leaving prison (‘opening the back door’). (Or by both methods, of course.) But community penalties
have been disappointing in their effects in this respect. They do not seem to reduce the prison populationand may not even much slow down its increase. Rather than displacing people from custody, they justdraw 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 arethen recalled for violations of their conditional release. The judgement has been taken that the public will
only tolerate early release if they can be assured that there will be tight enforcement and that any
violation will lead to a recall to prison. In the UK, this has led to large numbers being received back into
prison. In the USA, this tendency 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 Maruna2013). 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 efficientmeans of reducing the prison population. They have contributed to some successes in certain countries(Lappi‐Seppälä 2007), but many countries, especially in eastern Europe where there is often a legacy ofhigh prison populations from their Soviet days, have discovered that establishing a probation service andcreating a range of community penalties will not solve this problem on its own.
B. Protect the Public by Controlling Offenders in the Community
Public protection is political priority in many countries. There are examples of arrangements wherehigh 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 thepolice and by the probation service, work together combining their skills and resources to guard against
serious offending by dangerous people. These achievements must not be under-estimated. But here too
there is a challenge of credibility. The public only becomes aware of public protection when things gowrong — 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 politicalcriticism and calls for changes to be made. Can community punishment ever match the certainty in protection that imprisonment seems to offer?
C. Reduce Reconviction through Rehabilitation
The pessimistic idea that nothing works was challenged by research findings, especially from Canada
and the USA, that some kinds of programme were successful in reducing reconviction after all. These successful programmes focused on:▪

 isks — the higher the risk of reoffending, the more intensive and extended the supervisionR
programme should be. This principle can accordingly be used to determine who should be worked
with and to what level.

▪

 eeds — the focus of intervention must be on those needs or factors associated with theirN
offending. These are known as criminogenic needs2 .

▪

 esponsivity — ‘ensuring that all interventions, programmes and activities with offenders are runRin a way which is engaging, encourages full participation and takes account of issues of identity

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

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and diversity.’ (Dominey 2007)
and were▪

 ulti-modal (different methods / skills) — offenders’ problems are diverse, calling for a correM
spondingly diverse repertoire of interventions.

▪

 elivered as intended (programme integrity) — supporters of RNR claimed that where resultsD
were disappointing this may be because they had not been implemented appropriately (Andrews
and Bonta 2010)▪

 ommunity based — Programmes in the community were said to be more effective than thoseC
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 madewhen these programmes were developed in the UK, but they have not, perhaps, fulfilled the whole of theirpromise. 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 the community but
not so well in prison
⿟⿟ Some things work with some people but not others — for example, perhaps they work quite wellwith men, but less so with women; or they work well with younger people, but not so well witholder⿟⿟ 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 mostcommon arrangement, very little is known about how probation staff undertake this work and, forexample, whether some approaches are more successful than others.
Whatever the value of programmes of intervention, most countries are fully aware that prisoners (andpeople subject to community punishments) experience huge social disadvantage. A UK government reportfound:
Compared with the general population, prisoners are thirteen times as likely to have been in careas a child3 , thirteen times as likely to be unemployed, ten times as likely to have been a regulartruant from school, two and a half times as likely to have had a family member convicted of acriminal 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 wereusing drugs before imprisonment. Over 70 % suffer from at least two mental disorders. And 20 % ofmale and 37 % of female sentenced prisoners have attempted suicide in the past. The position isoften even worse for 18–20-year-olds, whose basic skills, unemployment rate and school exclusion
background are all over a third worse than those of older prisoners. (Social Exclusion Unit 2002: 6,
emphasis in original).
3 In care means brought up in a children’s home or a foster family.

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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 byprobation 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 they would add or
subtract from this list and perhaps give a different emphasis to some of these factors. Given this wide
range of social needs, it made sense for probation to work with other agencies of civil society. There areother organisations whose task it is to help people who are homeless, help them to find employment, offer
drug treatment and so on. Rather than try to create these services within the probation agency, it would
be better to work with these other organisations 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 inwhich 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 Offender Management
Service. At its best, this represents the idea of social inclusion and means that community punishment ismore than just punishment-outside-prison.
Yet it has also been emphasised that, without a guiding relationship, offender management 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 the importance of this working relationship. A relationship — based on trust andmutual respect — turns out from research to be every bit as important as the particular treatment
method favoured. Without a relationship none of these benefits is likely to be achieved. Again, the similarity to the role of Japanese VPOs is apparent.
To summarise findings about rehabilitation: the predominant model of rehabilitation in Europe andNorth America is Risks-Needs-Responsivity. But the insights of desistance research — 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 the attitudes 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 no place, 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 other words, theycome to lead to good lives. But not everyone has the same understanding of what a ‘good life’ is andoffenders 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 associated with risks and needs. Probation can support these developments but cannot
and should not try to lead them.

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D. Reparation and Mediation
Attention to the needs and rights of victims has prompted many probation agencies to introduce into
their policies and practices ways of working with and for victims. In many parts of the north and west ofEurope, this has proved quite difficult as well-established agencies, created to work with offenders, have
tried to work out how to add on — or, better, to integrate — work with victims. Newer services in Eastern
Europe have managed this better, perhaps, and Romania and — especially — the Czech Republic havedeveloped 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 the victim;
⿟⿟ offenders should be brought to understand that their behaviour has had real consequences for thevictim and the community;
⿟⿟ offenders can and should accept responsibility for their action;
⿟⿟ victims should have an opportunity to express their needs and to participate in determining thebest way for the offender to make reparation;
⿟⿟ the community has a responsibility to contribute to this process. (Czech Republic Probation andMediation 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 anational level — has an interest and a responsibility in responding to crime — in supporting the victim,
holding the offender to account, trying to bring it about that the offender does not offend again. And as wehave seen this involves not only personal change, but also opportunities. One obvious example is employment. It is well established 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, thenthis ‘pathway’ out of crime can be blocked. Reparative approaches have the potential to enable communities to see that a crime could be interpreted as a sign of something wrong in society and a challenge to
see how it can be put right — not only for this offender but to avoid offending by others.

V. NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Probation in Europe and in North America has been influenced in its work by new electronic technologies. Most obviously, the emphasis on case recording and the inputting of data onto computers leads many
probation staff in England to complain that they spend much more of their working time staring at ascreen and typing at a keyboard than in meeting with offenders or victims. The capacity to build andanalyse large data sets has led to a mode of ‘actuarial’ criminal justice where offenders are dealt with not
as individuals but as members of groups. There are also other technologies that have the potential totransform probation practice. This seems, in Europe and North America at least, to make a difference to
our thinking about the future of community penalties.
Electronic monitoring is widely used. At the moment, in UK, this mostly takes the form of a device
fitted to the individual’s ankle that communicates with another device attached to their home telephone.
This is how curfews4 are monitored. If the offender is away from home, the monitoring centre will receive
an alert and as soon as possible someone will attend the premises to find out what is going on. Note thatwhile this device can report an absence, it cannot tell you where the offender is (if away from theappointed 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 in this way. For
example, an offender might be ordered to stay away from a particular area and the GPS tracking device
would be able to monitor this.
4 A curfew is a requirement to remain at home at certain hours, usually and especially at night time.

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There are plenty of other devices besides. These include devices that detect the presence 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 biometric voiceprint 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 voice verification process is explained to them. An initial voice recording istaken 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 and those 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, is used in the US, where the machines interact with large
numbers of offenders. The machines ask offenders a series of questions, including whether they havechanged their address or job and if they have been arrested since their last report or wish to speak tosomeone. Probation service managers will also be able to add individually tailored questions to those asked
by the machines, 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 much probation officer time theymight be able to replace.
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 to support conventional probation
supervision. But maybe some offenders would prefer an impersonal intervention. There is some evidence(Nellis 2010) that electronic monitoring can have some rehabilitative benefits – by bringing some structureand discipline into people’s lives — but it is not promoted to the general public or marketed in this way somuch as a surveillance / control device. A personal worry is that the involvement of commercial firms inthe manufacture of these devices, and often in their deployment, will have the effect of greater and greater
use and lead to an expansion of penal control. Perhaps the most important message is that we must makesure that we use technology to support our work — technology should not lead it and we should not dothings just because we can.

VI. STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS
Before moving finally to consider the future of community penalties, it will be useful to look at theirstrengths and weaknesses, the opportunities they present and the threats of which we must be aware.
A. 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 the community. Prison
cannot bring this about. It has been said that you cannot teach someone 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.
⿟⿟ Relative financial costs — in principle, community penalties cost society much less than 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.
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how to do this. (Japanese probation seems to do this very well. “The mission of all volunteer
probation officers shall be, in the spirit of volunteer social service, to assist persons who havecommitted crimes and juvenile delinquents to improve and rehabilitate themselves, and toenlighten the public on crime prevention, thereby enhancing the local community and contributing to the welfare of both individuals and the public. (Art. 1, VPOs Act)” (Minoura,emphasis added)
B. 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’.
C. Opportunities
⿟⿟ Community penalties challenge the automatic assumption that punishment must involve prison.
⿟⿟ If used well, community penalties can contribute to reducing the numbers of people in prison.
Community penalties have had no more than limited success in lowering prison populations, as
we have seen, but unless these sanctions exist and are well-developed, 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 the rest of thecommunity — “VPOs, as liaisons between offenders and their communities, are the key individuals to facilitate this sense of acceptance by the community as well as the rehabilitation of
offenders.” (Minoura)⿟⿟ Greater participation of victims — who are often overlooked entirely in some criminal justicesystems.
⿟⿟ Potential to solve problems rather than avoid them — prison avoids or postpones problems.
Community penalties can attempt to solve them. 5
D. Threats⿟⿟ Community penalties have often drawn more people into the processes of control and punishment
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 thenumbers in prison not for their own intrinsic worth.
⿟⿟ Political demands for tough punishment could make it even harder to explain the value of
5 The concept of ‘community justice’ is of relevance here. It has been said that this rests on three principles: “First, thecommunity is the ultimate consumer of criminal justice. Rather than offenders, or even victims, it is communities that thesystem 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)

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community penalties to a sceptical public.
⿟⿟ There is a risk that if community penalties are made more demanding in an attempt to show thatthey are ‘credible’ punishment, this could lead to more imprisonment (as has happened in parts of
the USA). More requirements lead to more potential violations; then tight enforcement leads tomore prison.

VII. THE FUTURE OF COMMUNITY PENALTIES
Penal policy is influenced by social, political, economic and cultural factors that can be hard to anticipate. For example, penal policy has become much more ‘political’ in the UK and the USA than it was forty
years ago. It has become more punitive and it is now hard for politicians to change direction for fear of accusations of ‘being soft on crime’. On the other hand, financial pressures have brought about changes insome states of the USA, succeeding in reducing prison populations where other arguments have failed.
Community penalties have been 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 of surveillance andcontrol. Political and / or public pressures will be seen to make it necessary for community penalties to bepunitive and ‘prison-like’. Increased technology might replace the human relationships on which probation
fundamentally depends and more people will be drawn into an expanding system.
Another and better future might be this. Community penalties could be used to place an emphasis onsocial inclusion and to support opportunities for desistance. Crime can be regarded and used as an opportunity for the community to reflect on what is going wrong and to try to work out how arrangements
might be improved. Japan again offers this vision of community 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 inlocal communities by VPOs. These activities include street parades, small symposia for local
citizens, video forums in school, essay competitions and displaying posters. VPOs conduct thesecrime prevention activities in cooperation with municipal governments, community citizens, policeand other volunteer groups. Through these activities, local communities promote bonds in thecommunity, 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 ofoffenders 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 is increasingly 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 netof 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.
Council of Europe (1992) European Rules on Community Sanctions and Measures - <http://tinyurl.com/
qbxgvw5>.
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VISITING EXPERTS’ PAPERS
Czech Republic Probation and Mediation Service (2013) Best Practice Manual: Restorative Justice —Support and Counselling for Crime Victims, <http://tinyurl.com/zuxjewk>.
Dominey, J. (2007) ‘Responsivity’ in Canton, R. and Hancock, D. (eds.) Dictionary of Probation and Offender
Management, Cullompton: Willan.
Lappi‐Seppälä, T. (2007) ‘Penal Policy in Scandinavia’ in Michael Tonry (ed.) Crime, Punishment andPolitics in Comparative Perspective, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Minoura, S. Volunteer Probation Officers in Japan.
Nellis, M. (2010) ‘Electronic monitoring: Towards integration into offender management’ in Offender Supervision edited by McNeill, Raynor and Trotter Cullompton: Willan.
Robinson, G., McNeill, F. and Maruna, S. (2013) ‘Punishment in Society: The Improbable Persistence ofProbation and Other Community Sanctions and Measures’ in Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks(eds.) The Sage Handbook of Punishment and Society, London: Sage.
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-prisoners, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister —available online at <http://tinyurl.com/lpthfwr>.
Winstone, J. and Pakes, F. (eds.) (2005) Community Justice, Cullompton: Willan.

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