As part of government’s Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan, published in March 2023, a 6 month pilot will rapidly deploy those sentenced to perform Community Service (unpaid work) to swiftly clean up egregious instances of fly-tipping, vandalism and littering as part of a new government plan to tackle anti-social behaviour.
Rapid deployment teams – made up of offenders serving Community Payback sentences, kitted out in high vis jackets – will be sent to communities up and down the country to carry out local clean-ups, called upon within 48 hours of cases being reported to the Probation Service.
The pilot will see offenders carry out up to 20,000 hours of work in just 6 months, ensuring that they are paying for their crimes while giving back to the communities they have harmed.
Each year, courts hand down more than 50,000 Unpaid Work requirements to punish offenders for crimes including theft, criminal damage and alcohol-related incidents.
The Community Payback website also will be relaunched early next year, making it far easier for members of the public to report anti-social behaviour and nominate potential projects in their neighbourhoods.
This will work alongside the government’s new reporting tool that will allow members of the public can quickly and easily report incidents of anti-social behaviour when they take place.
The scheme will be piloted in the Probation Service regions of Greater Manchester, East of England, Wales and the North East, meaning they will benefit some of the towns known to be worst affected by anti-social behaviour in the country such as Middlesbrough and Blaenau Gwent.
The government states that “Wearing high-visibility jackets emblazoned with ‘Community Payback’ ensures offenders are seen to pay for their crimes while carrying out work that benefits the local community.”
Last month, a new law also came into effect requiring local probation services to consult annually with specific community leaders such as charities, victim organisations and elected policing bodies on the type of Unpaid Work that would benefit the region.
All good?
Almost all convicted clients we come into contact with accept their punishment with little complaint. Whilst unpaid work is an excellent way of contributing to communities, we remain concerned at the idea of high visibility shaming of offenders, a modern version of putting a criminal in the local stocks for parishioners to throw rotten fruit at.
The reality is that people occasionally make mistakes for which they must rightly be punished; any stigmatisation risks effective rehabilitation, and we will closely monitor this pilot scheme to ensure it works as intended.