The evolution of the community service system: new management approaches – new research perspectives

Abstract

Public opinion identifies to serve a sentence with imprisonment. In fact, the scene has been very various for over thirty years, since the introduction of community service in 1975. Such a measure underwent so strong increase and so deep transformations as to form a “non-custodial sanctions area”, a territory to be explored and managed independently from detention.

Such radical changes (both in the amount and in the characteristics of prison population) involve at least four aspects of the execution of community service: organizational, methodological, legislative and cultural. In the organizational perspective our approach shows the need to confer jurisdiction in the management of community sanctions to a single agency (Office for the Execution of Sentences in the Community Probation Office) and suggests the creation of multi-professional teams as in most European countries.

From the methodological point of view this approach implies the application of new modalities of “take-charge” able to develop and test the guidelines for the definition of a continuumbalancing the treatment strategies and the conditions and limitations established by the court. This leads to the adoption of personalized treatments ranging from a maximumof intensive management (for people considered at high risk of second offence) to a minimumcharacterized by a low restriction level closer to free life.
On the political side, the amendment of the whole criminal law –not only the reform of prison sentence as established by the law no. 375/1975 –is here suggested. In our view such an amendment has not yet been implemented because of the fear, common in public opinion and shared by a significant part of the political system, that the alternative measures may reduce the social control of deviance and, as a result, community safety. This in spite of all data relating to the revocation of sanctions and to second offence, which describe reality as opposed to common feeling. Last but not least, we considered the point of view of cultural change, in order to orient and enforce the previous points.
The academic world, as well as the media, can play a leading role in starting a thorough scientific examination of the subject, e.g. with respect to the transformations of the target groups, the relationship between political security and social inclusion, the definition of more specific education for those working in the field, etc.