‘High-visibility clothes’ should be worn for community service
labour wants public to be able to see work being done
Published:
OFFENDERS serving their sentences doing community projects should wear distinctive clothes, Labour said today.
The call came from party justice spokesman Richard Baker who said this would enable the public to see offenders were carrying out useful work.
“In America many community courts get their offenders to wear high-visibility vests,” said Mr Baker.
“The community can clearly see that offenders are working hard to repay their debt to society for the offence they have caused.”
He said the public in Scotland had little confidence in community service and a record number of breaches last year had done little to challenge the view that it was a “soft-touch option”.
“Offenders need to do useful and valuable work and communities need to clearly see that repaying your debt on a community sentence is not an easy option,” said Mr Baker.
“Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill wants to empty our prisons of 4,000 convicts and use community sentences instead.
“The public are rightly opposed to that approach but if Mr MacAskill has any sense he will listen to proposals that will give the public more confidence in community sentences.
“So far he has rejected this kind of visible approach.”
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We want to make sure communities have a say in the work being done and that the work is visible.
“We have funded three community justice authorities to pilot new ways of making the work more visible to communities and will act on the results.
“What’s most important is the work carried out by those serving community sentences, that they pay back their debt to society and that we bring down rates of reoffending.”
