It's like a top se­cret. Not many peo­ple in T&T know that there's a law which en­ables cer­tain of­fend­ers to per­form com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice in­stead of im­pris­on­ment. Of­ten, im­pris­on­ment is the main sen­tence pre­scribed. Un­nec­es­sary im­pris­on­ment con­tributes to over­crowd­ing and oth­er prob­lems. While we don't have much sta­tis­tics on how many com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­ders were is­sued, we be­lieve it can be used more; of course, where ap­plic­a­ble.

Two decades ago, the Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice Or­ders Act be­came law (Act 19, 1997). It's ap­plic­a­ble for peo­ple 16 years and old­er, who com­mit­ted a crime and is to be sen­tenced for 12 months or less. It's al­so ap­plic­a­ble for a sen­tence im­posed in de­fault of a fine. The court may or­der that part or the whole sen­tence be sus­pend­ed for up to two years and may make a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­der that re­quires the of­fend­er to per­form un­paid work.

Don't get wor­ried as com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­ders can­not be pre­scribed for se­ri­ous crimes. There are 16 crimes that don't car­ry such or­ders, eg mur­der, pos­ses­sion or use of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion with in­tent to in­jure, ag­gra­vat­ed as­sault, pos­ses­sion of im­i­ta­tion firearms in pur­suance of any crim­i­nal of­fence, shoot­ing or wound­ing with in­tent to do griev­ous bod­i­ly harm, rob­bery, ar­son, any sex­u­al of­fence, any drug traf­fick­ing of­fence, kid­nap­ping etc.

An of­fend­er can be giv­en be­tween 40 to 240 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice work. If he's con­vict­ed of two or more crimes and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­ders are pre­scribed for them, the court may or­der that the hours served may be con­cur­rent or con­sec­u­tive but they must not cross the 240 in to­tal.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, it's manda­to­ry that an of­fend­er must agree to be giv­en a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­der. This is one as­pect of the law that may need some re­con­sid­er­a­tion. There are ar­gu­ments that a con­vict­ed per­son shouldn't have a choice of what type of sen­tence he gets. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer must sub­mit a re­port in­di­cat­ing whether a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­der is nec­es­sary/ap­pro­pri­ate in the cir­cum­stances and whether the of­fend­er is suit­able to per­form the work. Fur­ther, if there aren't suit­able arrange­ments for the of­fend­er to per­form the work then the or­der may not be pre­scribed.

Of­fend­ers are giv­en a copy of the or­der as well as it is ex­plained to them in or­di­nary lan­guage re its pur­pose, ef­fect, re­quire­ments and con­se­quences for fail­ing to com­ply. Care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion is placed in the or­der to avoid clash­es with the of­fend­er's re­li­gious be­liefs, nor­mal work times and at­ten­dance at ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions. It's ex­pect­ed that the hours of com­mu­ni­ty work shall be com­plet­ed with­in a 12-month pe­ri­od but this can be ex­tend­ed.

Breach an or­der and the of­fend­er will be sum­moned to court to face a range of con­se­quences, eg, in ad­di­tion to be­ing asked to com­plete the hours, he may be fined up to $500; an ad­di­tion­al or­der can be im­posed; the or­der may be re­voked and the im­pris­on­ment sen­tence im­posed etc. The law is flex­i­ble in that if cir­cum­stances change while the of­fend­er is serv­ing an or­der, the or­der may be changed or even re­voked.

Fur­ther, if while an of­fend­er is serv­ing an or­der he gets con­vict­ed for an­oth­er mat­ter and im­pris­on­ment is the penal­ty, the orig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­der may be re­voked and the per­son may be re­quired to serve the im­pris­on­ment term. The court may al­so make a com­bi­na­tion or­der where the of­fend­er per­forms un­paid work of be­tween 40 to 100 hours and to be un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer for be­tween one and three years.

Great news! Did you know that a per­son serv­ing a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­der can get away with­out hav­ing any record of con­vic­tion record­ed against him? Where an of­fend­er has no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion and has com­plet­ed his or­der, the court may de­clare the record of con­vic­tion against him null and void. This goes a long way for peo­ple want­i­ng a po­lice cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter re­quired for cer­tain jobs, etc. It's a win-win sen­tenc­ing op­tion that should be em­braced!

The Chief Pro­ba­tion Of­fi­cer is tasked to keep a list of or­gan­i­sa­tions, groups, gov­ern­ment de­part­ments and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions that may re­quire work to be done un­der an Or­der. In fact, an or­gan­i­sa­tion may ap­ply for an of­fend­er to be as­signed to them to per­form tasks. An of­fend­er may be re­quired to per­form com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice for be­tween five and 21 hours a week.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, where the of­fend­er is a fe­male, the pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer shall be fe­male and vol­un­teers can be ap­point­ed to as­sist pro­ba­tion of­fi­cers.

As a mat­ter for pol­i­cy, it's in­ter­est­ing to know: how many or­gan­i­sa­tions are will­ing to ac­cept of­fend­ers to per­form du­ties at their places? How com­fort­able ex­ist­ing staff mem­bers feel with such of­fend­ers work­ing along­side them? What are the ef­fects of stereo­typ­ing of of­fend­ers known to be per­form­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice? How ef­fec­tive is the trade-off be­tween per­form­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice work and not hav­ing a con­vic­tion be­ing record­ed against them vs be­ing found out that a per­son is per­form­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice work?

As T&T looks to­ward re­duc­ing the prison pop­u­la­tion, let's not shy away from ac­cess­ing com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­ders for cer­tain crimes as it's a win-win op­tion for all.

Train from over 120 pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment cours­es for or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als on cus­tomer ser­vice for of­fi­cers, in­ves­ti­ga­tions, fraud de­tec­tion, CCTV sys­tems, crim­i­nal law, cor­po­rate se­cu­ri­ty, su­per­vi­sion and man­age­ment, etc. Tel: 223-6999, 299-8636, in­fo@caribbeanse­cu­ri­tyin­sti­tute.com or www.caribbeanse­cu­ri­tyin­sti­tute.com

Did you know that a per­son serv­ing a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or­der can get away with­out hav­ing any record of con­vic­tion record­ed against him? Where an of­fend­er has no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion and has com­plet­ed his or­der, the court may de­clare the record of con­vic­tion against him null and void.

The top se­cret that is com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice