Benefits of a brush with the law

It's women-only day in Dundee's community service workshop. Because of the Easter holidays turn-out is low at 50%. For those with legitimate reasons, such as no childcare cover, it means they don't get the opportunity to work off the hours as quickly.

For those who fail to show without a good reason, there will be a letter in the post today. After two warnings you're suspended and unless you can provide suitable documentary proof, such as a doctor's note, you'll be sent back to court. Two strikes and out. It's up to the court to then decide whether people should be sent to prison or given another chance at community service.

"It's hard work but it's made me think twice about getting in trouble," says Jackie, 20, who got 80 hours for breaching an Anti-Social Behaviour Order.

"I was crying in court because everyone said I would probably get the jail and I've got a four-year-old girl and didn't want to leave her. I've got 37 hours to go and I just want to get it finished."

The courts handed out almost 6000 CSOs last year. Men account for almost 90% of those given orders. Some six in 10 of the women on community service are aged 25 or older and many have children.

Today, the three women here are painting planters, the wooden boxes which hold the flower pots around the city's roundabouts. "I got 150 hours for shoplifting and having a knuckle duster," said Louise, 33, as she painted a box. "I've got three children so going to prison would've been a nightmare."

Steve, a joiner by trade, says that, despite the mixed backgrounds of the "clients", there have been been confrontations but no fights in his three years here. The supervisors, who work in a ratio of one to five with the offenders, are predominantly tradesman who want to give something back.

"One of the key roles of the supervisors is to act as role models and it is that aspect which can have the greatest influence on changing someone's behaviour," says Grant Paterson, team manager and senior social worker.

"Talking to the supervisors and mixing with vulnerable people in the community is one of the things which helps them stop offending. It is not a soft option. A lot of clients have said this was harder than going to prison."

Katrina, 20, finished her order last week and is now in full-time employment. She was sentenced to 280 hours on her 19th birthday in July 2006. The maximum is 300 hours and she knows she narrowly escaped time in jail. She's a wee slip of a girl, making the fact she was convicted of assault to severe injury all the more surprising.

"Doing community service has taught me a lot," she said. "It's taught me to keep my head down and not to get provoked. It's taught me to talk rather than argue. I've only got one chance to appreciate my wee boy's childhood and I want to make sure I'm here to be with him. The supervisors are not asking for pure graft. They're just asking us to come in at a specific time and work."

Since 1999-2000, there has been an almost 40% rise in the number of CSOs, a move almost universally welcomed by ministers and academics who believe that short-term prison sentences are expensive and ineffective.

However, in 2006 Social Work Inspectorate Agency reports highlighted concerns about the way CSOs were run in Glasgow, Highland, Dumfries and Galloway, Borders, Edinburgh and Lanarkshire. The agency made clear that the orders were a vital tool but warned there was a lack of consistency. Since then improvements have been made, but if the use of the orders is to increase, it is clear that further investment will be required.

Watching Naomi Campbell, Boy George or George Michael picking up litter while looking overtly glamorous on community service, doesn't really do the measure justice. In many ways it is a crude tool. Ordering someone to do 200 hours of painting seems as effective in changing human behaviour as teachers asking pupils to write 200 lines at school.

Is it a deterrent, a way of offenders righting the wrongs they have caused in the community, a means of changing behaviour, or simply a punishment?

For Yvonne Adams, chief officer for the Mid Lin day care centre for the elderly, it proved the only affordable means of renovating their dilapidated building.

"The idea of having community service people here to paint the building terrified me," she said. "When you read in the paper about people getting community service it usually says they should have got the jail. The vulnerability of our clients made it a real concern, but the people were all background checked, well supervised and worked really hard.

"I think the idea that they're giving something back to the community is invaluable. The work they did here was something we just couldn't have afforded."

One seeming paradox is that since CSOs began almost 20 years ago, their use has increased dramatically but so too has the prison population. If the effect of ministers calling for more orders means the net widening to the lowest level offenders who in the past might only have received a fine, clearly the measure will not have the desired effect.

"The politicians have not been doing community service any favours," says Nairn Robertson, one of the supervisors overseeing the painting of a community centre. "They've been giving the wrong impression. Cathy Jamieson (the former Justice Minister)said if someone breaks one window we'll make them fix 100, but that just wasn't thought through. Who's going to make 100 windows? Who's going to train them as glaziers?

"It doesn't matter what party it is, but they keep appealing to the basic human instincts of the public and that's wrong. The emphasis should be on speaking to people to and getting them to think about what they've done."

New guidelines are expected this summer to speed up the time between an order being made and completed and draft legislation will be announced in the autumn, all of which is hoped to increase the use and rigour of the orders and, indirectly, curb Scotland's burgeoning prison population. In future rather than just being about unpaid work, some 15% of the order will focus on skills such as employability.

"You can't send everybody to prison," Liam, 20, said as we paint the sports pavilion. "You've got to give people a chance. For some people it takes a while to calm down though. I can see why they want offenders to do work in the community, but getting people signed up for real work would maybe make a bigger difference. Having a job would help.

"Having a bairn. That's what's really changed things. I've been in jail, on probation, and tagged and having a bairn's the only thing that's really made a difference. This is the last time I'm going to be doing community service."

The Scottish Government's research last year found that the public needs to be better educated about what community service is. Traditionally it's been an almost invisible part of the justice system but if areas like Dundee can show the public how offenders on community service have helped to improve the area and, indeed, assisted in the city winning awards, it might help to change attitudes.

As the train skims past the sports pavilion where we've been painting over graffitti, I can't help feeling a twinge of pride in my work, slapdash as it was. Perhaps, just perhaps, this is one of the ways community service works.