The Ineffectiveness of Community Service Sentencing Compared to Imprisonment

Sentencing in criminal cases primarily serves two purposes: to punish and rehabilitate offenders. One of the sentencing options available to judges is community service, which involves offenders doing unpaid community work as a punishment for their crimes. Proponents of community service as an alternative punishment argue that it is a good way to hold culprits responsible. Since it involves serving the communities within which they committed their offenses, proponents of this justice model argue that it is a good way for offenders to give back to the community: The Ineffectiveness of Community Service Sentencing Compared to Imprisonment.

By working on public utilities, offenders get an opportunity to restore the damage that was caused by their wayward actions. Besides, supporters of this form of punishment aver that it allows offenders to learn useful skills, potentially helping them become valuable members of society. Although community service is seen as less punitive compared to incarceration, a wide body of existing research casts doubt on its effectiveness in reducing recidivism and deterring future crimes.

Existing Research

Failure to Address Root Causes of Offending

Existing research on community service has delved into how the punishment is not effective in addressing the root causes that lead to offending. Research on offending has shown that economic, social, and psychological (mental) factors may influence individuals to offend (Mackenzie, 2006). Some criminals engage in crime due to the pressures of underlying conditions such as depression, trauma, personality disorders, and drug and substance abuse. While an offender serves under community service, much attention is dedicated to how the offenders can help the community and less to how the issues that led them to offending may be curbed (Mackenzie, 2006).

Whereas the offenders may participate in positive activities and learn a new skill, less attention is directed toward helping them overcome the personal struggles that led them to offending, thus a high chance of recidivism. For instance, if an offender was a habitual drug user, something that may have led them to offend, they may continue using drugs while actively involved in community service, hence the likelihood that they may still offend in the future. The lack of therapy programs for offenders while actively engaged in community services reinforces the concern that the punishment is centered on society instead of the offender.

Moreover, research indicates there are a myriad of socioeconomic factors that may contribute to offending. From a social perspective, living in neighborhoods characterized by violence and high poverty levels increases the chances of someone engaging in crime (Mackenzie, 2006). For instance, high-poverty areas have a high number of homeless people who may engage in crimes such as shoplifting just to get by.

If such individuals are caught and committed to community service, the punishment may not make a difference in their lives; since the system will not address the social factors that led them to offend. Besides, if offenders are not offered economic opportunities such as job training and connection to job opportunities, community service is ineffective in preventing re-offending.

Little Impact on Recidivism Reduction

Cullen and Gendreau (2000) aver that most alternative correctional treatments, such as community service, are pegged on hope and informed speculation rather than informed information. The authors go ahead to aver that correctional methods deemed to be humane, such as community service, are vaguely related to behavior change, if there is any relationship at all. To emphasize the lack of efficacy among correctional treatment programs in California, Cullen and Gendreau (2000) indicate that such programs offer disappointing results. To put it into perspective, the programs are apparently as ineffective as not attending any program altogether.

Further, researchers have investigated the effectiveness of punishment-oriented interventions such as community service in curbing recidivism. Cullen and Gendreau (2000) aver that punishment-oriented services lack human-service treatment, rendering them ineffective as a deterrent measure. To emphasize this point, the researchers aver that punishing offenders in the community was a strategy implemented to ease overcrowding in prisons in the 1980s.

These facts cast serious doubt on whether criminal psychologists and other experts engaged in intense research to investigate whether incarceration impedes offending.  Since the goal was to reduce overcrowding in prisons, the concerned stakeholders began on a wrong footing. The interventions would have been effective if criminal psychology researchers had investigated how to make community punishments more effective than incarceration.

Cullen and Gendreau (2000) also investigate the efficacy of intensive supervision probation (ISP) or parole which are associated with community service punishment. Offenders under intensive supervision probation are constantly watched, presumably enhancing the likelihood that their misdeeds during the period can be detected. ISP is characterized by random drug tests and electronic monitoring meant to arrest an offender’s likely pathways to offend while their sentence is still active.

However, it emerges that most offenders focused on staying out of trouble during active service, and could potentially return to their old actions after the end of community service. Overall, the failure to offer human-service treatment, and a focus punishment as a way to deter future offending has zero effects on recidivism reduction.

Perceived Lack of Severity

Another argument raised against the effectiveness of community service as a deterrent punishment is that offenders view it as a softer punishment and, hence less likely to learn any lessons or change their unwelcome behaviors. Canada is a good example of countries that believes in the effectiveness of ‘tough on crime’ approaches as a good way to deal with crime. The country has a particularly tough stance on youth crime by implementing a policy that encourages incarceration over the application of alternative punishments.

The program has led to increased imprisonments among youth offenders, with the Aboriginal youth being disproportionately affected. Despite growing calls to abolish the system and adopt a rehabilitative-oriented correctional treatment, one may not ignore the fact that a reduction in offending rates and recidivism in Canada is a result of the adoption of a tough punishment stance.

Hogeveen (2005) reinforces the importance of focusing on the offenders’ psychology while implementing punishments. Although alternative community-based punishments such as community service are politically correct and seem to promote fairness, they do not influence offenders to change their behavior. To that end, most offenders seem to perceive community service not to be tough and sufficiently challenging to the extent that it can make them avoid reoffending.

Some may risk participating in crime, aware that they are likely to be subjected to a less punishing experience akin to what they have experienced before. Community service is a sharp contrast to incarceration, which is characterized by shame, disruption of one’s education/job engagements, and even more psychologically punishing, the separation from one’s family.

Community Service Varying Supervision and Quality

Research on the effectiveness of community service also covers the quality and supervision variability of community service programs. From the outset, it has emerged that policy and program inconsistency impedes the efficacy of community services, making it hard to measure their effectiveness. In the same breath, the inconsistent application of supervision, where some programs receive limited supervision, leads to poor outcomes.

Bonta et al. (2008) highlight the benefits of using community-based justice mechanisms over incarceration. From the outset, the authors highlight the cost benefits of implementing community service as a measure to deter crime. Unlike incarceration, community service offers an inexpensive way to deal with crime perpetrators. This is true because governments use resources to house, feed, and provide humanitarian services to offenders.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics data, states across the US incarcerated a total of 1 million offenders by the end of 2021 (USA Facts, 2022). To house all prisoners, state governments collectively spent a whopping $64 billion. Notably, there is variability in expenditure as some states, like Arkansas, spend as low as $23,000 to house a prisoner annually, while Massachusetts spends a whopping $ 307,468 annually (USA Facts, 2022). These figures indicate how expensive it is to accommodate prisoners, and why community service will take the burden off the states.

Despite the cost benefits, Bonta et al. (2008) aver that the primary goal of any correctional system is to rehabilitate inmates. To that end, there is a need to look beyond the cost benefits of adopting community service as an alternative punishment. A major concern is the lack of stringent supervision measures for offenders, leading to unintended outcomes. Due to inadequate supervision, some offenders drop out of the program midway before they complete it.

There are also reports of some offenders not reporting for their programs altogether, while others are transferred to different supervision officers while a program is being implemented. One factor contributing to varied supervision measures for offenders under community service punishment is case management and risk principle (Bonta et al., 2008). According to the risk principle of effective rehabilitation, the intervention implemented for each offender is matched with the risk level of every offender.

To that end, low-risk offenders receive minimal supervision services, while high-risk offenders receive intensive monitoring services.  Offenders circumvent this principle by committing to a community service program during the first three months; only for them to abandon it later once, they are sure there is less scrutiny.

Need for Further Research

Effectiveness of Bootcamps as a Rehabilitative Measure

There is a need for further research on the effectiveness of boot camps as a core component of community service to help offenders rehabilitate.  Boot camps became significant because they provide human services while on the journey to rehabilitate offenders. One key focus of community service programs is to equip offenders with on-demand market skills to make them useful members of society and avert recidivism.

Some of the skills taught include fitness training and coding, to transform offenders into coders and fitness trainers. Since training in boot camps is a more humane way to rehabilitate offenders, there is a need for further research on whether they can effectively alleviate the problem of recidivism that is not solved by regular community service programs.

Moreover, there is a need for a comparative study to determine the effectiveness of community service relative to other community-based punishment programs. To that end, probation, restorative justice, and restitution are some of the community-based services that can potentially be used in place of community service. Cullen and Gendreau (2000) aver that restitution is the most effective community-based punishment for offenders that works. Therefore, there is a need for further research to determine the effectiveness of restitution as a deterrent, as well as other community-based interventions that can reduce recidivism.

Thirdly, there is a need for more research on the psychological influences of community service as a way to deter crime. The research should build on the wide body of research that has established that incarceration has limited to zero effects on psychological pathways of offending. Future research should focus on determining whether community services induce feelings of guilt and remorse which can prevent an offender from re-offending.

Conclusion

In summary, a wide body of research indicates that community service is not an effective crime deterrent punishment. One reason for the ineffectiveness is that the punishment fails to address the socioeconomic root causes that contribute to offending. Also, a lack of stringent supervision of offenders under community service renders the punishment ineffective. Besides, offenders perceive community service as a softer punishment than imprisonment, hence not an effective deterrent.

There is a need for further research to determine whether the psychological impacts of community service can make offenders avoid repeat offenses. Also, a comparative study between community service, other community-based punishments, and imprisonment will suffice. Finally, there is a need to investigate whether adopting boot camps as a human service intervention under community service can alleviate recidivism.

References

Bonta, J., Rugge, T., Scott, T.-L., Bourgon, G., & Yessine, A. K. (2008). Exploring the Black Box       of Community Supervision. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 47(3),             248–270.         https://doi.org/10.1080/10509670802134085

Cullen, F. T., & Gendreau, P. (2000). Assessing correctional rehabilitation: Policy, practice, and    prospects. Criminal justice, 3(1), 299-370.

Hogeveen, B. R. (2005). “If we are tough on crime, if we punish crime, then people get the message.” Punishment & Society, 7(1), 73–89.             https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474505048134

Mackenzie, D. L. (2006). What works in corrections: reducing the criminal activities of         offenders and delinquents. Cambridge University Press.

USA Facts. (2022, September 15). How Much Do States Spend on prisons? USAFacts.       https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-prisons/

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