The U.K government wants to completely rebrand community service.

A MASSIVE unpaid army of ­workers is to be created from thousands of convicted criminals in a bid to ­kick-start the economy, the Sunday Express can reveal.

Multimillion-pound industrial projects will be undertaken by a land army of 100,000 criminals as an ­alternative to custodial sentences.

Offenders will be expected to work unpaid for up to seven hours a day in a major plan for them to “pay something back” to society.

They will do labouring work on building projects, carry out ­industrial cleaning and clear towns and cities of the blight of graffiti.

A huge expansion of the community service or unpaid work scheme will see it double in size as part of the Government’s flagship “rehabi­litation revolution”.

Instead of the “soft touch” option of doing several hours community labour a week offenders will work full-time completing up to 240-hour sentences more quickly.

Road-sweeping and window cleaning will be replaced by harder manual work, saving the public purse millions as part of Government cost cutting.

The ambitious plan is part of the privatisation of community sentencing or unpaid work revealed by the Sunday Express last week.

Three companies, Serco, Kalyx and Compac, have already been ­approved by the Ministry of Justice to tender for the privatised community service contracts which could start as soon as next year.

A Whitehall source revealed: “Putting it simply it is payback time. This policy will send out a very tough message that there is no easy ride and that it is everybody’s ­responsibility to rebuild the economy and the country.

“One hundred thousand is a big workforce, almost doubling the 55,000 now sentenced to community service or unpaid work.”

Putting criminals to work on ­social housing and even bridge construction has also been considered.

It is understood that the successful contract bidders will negotiate placements with the private sector.

The Government wants to completely rebrand community service by toughening up its image and ­cutting costs by up to £40million.

The probation service, which has run community sentencing since 1974, says the proposals could break health and safety legislation and threaten the future of paid ­workers.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said: “This is all about punishment and not rehabilitation but clearly it is ­essential that there is an element of rehabilitation, otherwise individuals are likely to carry on offending.”

Last week we revealed how ­battle-hardened war veterans will be put in charge of criminals ­serving community sentences.

Using Afghanistan and Gulf War veterans would also tackle the threat of violence against probation service officers who currently do the job.

Express.co.uk
By: David Jarvis, September 26 2010