[jambutty]

Yet another highly controversial topic on the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine show.

In some towns around the country criminals convicted of ‘minor’ crimes get “Community Orders” as a means of punishment.

The ‘criminals’ wear a high visibility tabard as they go about their allotted tasks. It was suggested that the tabards for the males, were in hi visibility girlie pink emblazoned with pretty flowers. No one seems to have thought what the females would wear. However the idea is to humiliate the offenders as well as punish them. I’ll bet there will be strong opinions on this point. I feel that humiliating an offender in this way would be counter productive.

Opinion seems to be divided with, according to the written response on the BBC Radio 2 web site, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/vine/yoursay_mon1.shtml leaning towards yes it’s a good idea.

I suppose that this initiative is the modern equivalent to dumping offenders in the stocks to await missiles of rotten fruit and eggs etc.

If it was organised and supervised properly this could be the answer to bring the miscreants back into line. Sadly, as is usual with this excuse for a government, it is being done on a shoe-string and hardly thought through.

Non-attendance seems to be rife and the courts just don’t want to know and send them back for “Community Service”.

What is needed is that if an offender fails to turn up or lazes around not doing the work, one day should be added to the sentence. To balance that, one day should be deducted from the sentence if the criminal does attend AND MOST IMPORTANTLY does the task to the satisfaction of the supervisor.

The other contentious issue is what sort of work. First of all it MUST NOT take work away from current employees, thus making them redundant. Secondly the work must be within the capabilities of the offender. This limits the sort of work that could be done but seeing as street cleaners are few and far between this could be one task, particularly in autumn and not just limited to the town centres. The removal of graffiti could be another.