By Richard Johnstone | 24 August 2011
Reforms to community sentences will see offenders without jobs being made to work a full five-day week, the government announced today.
Crispin Blunt, minister for prisons and probation, has confirmed that unemployed offenders sentenced to community payback schemes, which can include clearing up litter, cleaning graffiti and maintaining parks and other green spaces, will now have to work a minimum of 28 hours over four days. The fifth day is to be spent looking for full-time employment.
Currently, community payback programmes could be spread out over 12 months with some offenders working just six hours per week. The changes will also see sentences start quicker, beginning within seven days of sentencing, instead of two weeks.
About 100,000 individuals are sentenced to community payback each year across England and Wales, with over 8.8 million hours of unpaid work completed last year. Offenders have already been undertaking community payback punishments to help the clear up after the rioting in England earlier this month.
Blunt said that the reformed punishments would ‘help break the cycle of crime and encourage a law-abiding life’.
Hesaid: 'The public want to see offenders giving something back to their communities, but they are rightly not satisfied with seeing only a handful of hours a week dished out. Decent, law-abiding people can work a full five-day week and so should offenders.’
The changes form part of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, but a Ministry of Justice spokesman said guidance has already been sent to the National Offender Management Service to introduce the changes.
The Bill is also set to allow the management of community payback schemes to be put out to tender to approved companies and probation trusts. This is part of plans for the MoJ to open up offender services to competition, as revealed last month.
