MODELING OF COMMUNITY SERVICE PROGRAMME

Scope and Definition
Community service is a legal instruction and or a court order as the case may be, in terms of section 60 of Correctional Services Act of 1998, that requires an offender to perform a specified number of hours of uncompensated work or service within given time period.

Community service is indeed (part of) a court sentence as determined by the court and or a continuation of a court sentence as contemplated by the legal provisions' (Correctional Services Act) that gives rise to our parole system. The sentence is served in the community by a probationers or a parolee. It is essentially a free service or uncompensated work done for the community.

Besides it being a legal tool, community is consistent with and should seek to uphold the long held community based traditions dealing with offenders and with healing the damage caused by crime within the community. Furthermore, it is a positive and cost-effective measure to be preferred whenever possible to a sentence of imprisonment.

Community service should be effectively implemented and supervised and involve a programme of work where the offender is required to carry out a number of hours of voluntary work for the benefit of the community in his or her own time or prescribed time.

In terms of the provisions of the Act, this services and or work must be done in compliance with the court order, conditions as set by the Community Supervision and Parole Board, Commissioner (or his delegate) or by the Supervision Committee.

Underlying Principles for Community Service (Orders)
1. Any Community Service (order) must provide an environment where the offender can come to terms with his or her offense. It must, where practically possible, provide an opportunity for the offender to relate to the impact of the offense (e.g. sentencing a litterer to pick up litter along the highway, to a drunk driver being required to appear before school groups to explain why drunk driving is a crime and an ethical breach.

2. It must seek to enhance civil reparation and alternative compensation to the community for wrongdoing. The actual community service must be substantial in material value and where possible promote mediated interface between the offender and the victim, for instance someone who vandalizes park equipment may be required to repair that equipment, etc. The direct link will always serve to provide learning for other possible offenses of similar nature.

3. Seek to promote and preserve human dignity and enable stable community relations. Attempts should further be made to ensure that the service rendered is commensurate with the capabilities (and skills) and therefore optimal value is obtained from the services of the offenders. Unless a teacher poses a serious threat to learners, there is no reason why the teacher should clean the streets instead of providing extra lessons to identified learners.

4. The services must seek to instill positive values.

5. The service must seek to enable reintegration than be disruptive to it. In instances where it is possible, the service must be rendered during times that are not disruptive to continued and or new employment opportunities.

Community Service Hours
Where a condition of community service is set, it must stipulate the number of hours which the person is required to serve, which shall not be less than sixteen hours (16) per month, unless the court / CSPB/Commissioner or his/her delegate/ other body otherwise directed in accordance with Section 60(1) of the Correctional Services Act, 1998 (Act 111 of 1998). The set' hours must be allocated in a manner enabling the offender to effectively integrate and as such must leave a space for other activities; employment seeking and or continuation, attendance of other programmes, social activities (religious services, etc)

Amendment of Conditions

• In a case wher~ an offender contravenes his or her conditions, the supervision committee may recommend that his or her conditions should be adjusted.
• If the offender is employed, the rendering of community service should be structured in such a manner that it does not affect his/her employment.
• An unemployed offender must perform community service as agreed upon.

Management and Supervision

Management framework
Community service is essentially a community driven programme that seek to draw maximum involvement of the public into a crimin~1 justice system in general and correctional services programmes in particular. The law provides for the Department of Correctional Services in general to carry out and ensure implementation of court sentences.

However instances where alternative sentence is meted out, as is the case with community service orders, the courts can sentence the probationer to DCS or other social institutions capacitated to attend to the prescribed sentence. However, another category of people serving community services are parolees, and in this specific instance - the CSPB and or Commissioner (or delegated authority) can prescribe it as part of parole.

The South African White Paper on Corrections prescribe community involvement and partnership in correction of offending behaviour and CSA in the other hand mandates the DCS to promote social responsibility. It is important that in managing community service (and social reintegration in general) DCS establish a principled and structured partnership with the communities. This will include formalized and structured relationship defining clearer roles and predictable responsibilities for different parties. Given the (potential) spread of our non-custodial offenders, DCS must therefore rely on this defined public role to effectively achieve its legal mandate.

Offender Supervision
Supervision will remain DCS legal responsibility but actual execution for majority of cases will be shared and formally structured through Service Level Agreements (SLA) entered into between' DCS as a responsible state institution and community service recipient who wil.1 act firstly as a partner and as an agent. A draft of the SLA is attached here as Annexure A, and it defines responsibilities, relationships and obligations of all three parties (DCS, Agent and the non custodial offender; i.e. probationer and parolee specifically).