NCJ Number
207644
Date Published
2004
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This chapter reflects on what British offenders might experience as "citizenship" gains from performing unpaid work for the community.
Abstract
Although there is ongoing debate about the purposes of "citizenship" education, the essence of citizenship goes beyond "civics" lessons to include social responsibilities, such as good neighborliness, moral responsibility, political literacy, and volunteering; abstinence from crime is taken for granted. The architects of the community service order anticipated that benefits for offenders would include more active and responsible citizenship through learning behaviors that improve rather than harm the community, the acquisition of vocational skills, and the fostering of a belief that they can make a significant contribution to the community. The Community Service (CS) Pathfinder projects funded by the British Home Office under the Crime Reduction Program reflect an effort to apply this thinking in evaluating program results. Key elements of the CS Pathfinder projects involved supervisors acting as prosocial models and offenders working toward certification for employment-related skills while performing community service. This chapter focuses on this prosocial modeling in tracing the origins and development in community service work in a pilot project that was a strand in the CS Pathfinder projects. It discusses lessons from these initiatives for the future development of prosocial modeling as a component in Great Britain's Enhanced Community Punishment scheme. Attention is given to an accommodation to social and cultural diversity among offenders in community-service planning. 5 notes and 55 references