Punishing way to make good

IT'S lunchtime at the Bell Farm social hall. About 20 people are sitting at a long table in the centre of the hall, tucking into a healthy, three-course meal. It's roasted red pepper and sweet potato soup for starters, followed by mince 'n mash with cauliflower cheese, and home-made apple and blackberry crumble for pud.

There is a buzz of laughter and chat among the mainly elderly customers, and a bit of back-chat with the white-coated waiters. Everybody is praising the food.

"It's very nice," says Mrs Dorothy Leadley, 79, who comes for the regular Wednesday lunches almost every week.

"It's a very high standard," adds Christine Bell, who has come with her mother and her husband. "They make everything themselves here."

What is remarkable about the Wednesday lunches at the social hall, however, is that everything is cooked and served by offenders - mainly young men serving out community orders.

As part of their punishment, the three cooks on duty today have all been ordered to do between 40 and 300 hours of unpaid work in the community - in their case, preparing and cooking the food for lunch here each Wednesday and two Sundays a month.

Under the close supervision of Dave Heron, a trained chef and community service supervisor with the North Yorkshire Probation Service, they do everything themselves - making fresh, half-coated chocolate biscuits and gingerbread Pudsey Bears, baking fresh bread rolls for the soup, even picking the blackberries to go in the apple and blackberry crumble.

Once lunch is over, they will all sit down together and plan next week's menu.

Joe - not his real name - is typical of the cooks. The 33-year-old landscape gardener was ordered to do 60 hours of unpaid work under a community order given him by magistrates.

After he split up with his wife at the beginning of the year, his life spiralled out of control. He lost his gardening job, and couldn't afford to keep up the insurance on his car. He was caught with a dodgy MOT certificate and no insurance - and when police raided his house, they found cannabis and cannabis plants.

"It was only for personal use, but I got done for that as well," he says.

Instead of a fine, which would have been pointless because he had no money, or a jail sentence, Joe was ordered to do unpaid work under the new system of Community Orders brought in last April.

Not being locked up let Joe get his job back - "I've got a very good boss," he says - and he can still look after his daughter: since parting from his wife, he has effectively been a single parent.

He is also learning something useful. As a single dad, he could cook basic meals.

"But I'm learning things I'd not done before. Stew and dumplings, sausage casserole, strawberry cheesecake. We do all the preparation work and everything. I'm going to have a go at baking biscuits with my daughter now."

Joe says that by putting in the hours at the social hall, he feels he is giving something back to the community. And it seems to be appreciated. "We often end up sat having a cup of tea, talking to the locals. You expect to be looked down on, but they don't. They treat you right around here."

Christine Bell appreciates what he and the other cooks are doing. "It's a very good idea," she says. "It is great that they are giving something back. Prisons are overcrowded anyway, and this is giving them their self-respect and self-esteem back."

Joe enjoys his days at the social hall so much he will miss them when he has finished his community order.

That's all well and good: but what about the idea that people who break the law should be punished? Joanne Atkin, a senior probation officer with North Yorkshire Probation Service, insists community orders are not an easy option.

Under the new system, each community order combines a number of elements, she says - which include punishment, rehabilitation and, where appropriate, reparation or 'payback'. The unpaid work order is one small part of it. In Joe's case, because his crime was minor, the 60 hours of unpaid work is all he is required to do.

But even so, it is just as much punishment as slapping him with a fine he wouldn't be able to pay. "The people here at the social hall do a full day's work - and they work hard," Joanne says. And if anyone fails to turn up for their unpaid work, they face having their punishment increased - and could, ultimately, be sent to jail.

In most cases, unpaid work is accompanied by other elements of the community order.

These can involve requiring offenders to attend rehabilitation sessions to help them cope with drugs or alcohol problems, or other programmes such as sex offenders programmes.

Many offenders given community orders are also subject to curfews or other restrictions on their lives - and even electronic tagging.

Some younger offenders may have left school with few qualifications and little hope of finding a job. So it is hoped that the unpaid work element of a community order also gives them a chance to get some valuable work experience that could count towards a vocational qualification.

In North Yorkshire, offenders are working on community projects ranging from cleaning aircraft at Elvington air museum, to gardening, painting and decorating community buildings, and catering. One young offender given a community order for graffiti is even using his artistic skills to design a giant Harry Potter mural for the Bell Farm social hall.

Now the probation service is working with local colleges to try to ensure that the work done by offenders under the community orders can count towards basic qualifications. This should help them either to get a job afterwards, or to go on to do further vocational training.

It has to be better than just locking them up for a couple of months, Joanne says.

"A community order lets people keep their links in the community - with their employer if they have one, and with their family," she says. "Uprooting them from all that by sending them to prison can cause more problems than it solves. They can lose their jobs, lose their homes, even lose their families - all the things that we're trying to help offenders to build."

Wednesday lunches at the Bell Farm social hall cost £2. Sunday roasts (twice a month) cost £3. To book, call 01904 654600.

Types of unpaid work

Offenders in North Yorkshire are involved in a range of different types of unpaid work. They include:

u Graffiti busting

u Cleaning and maintaining community halls, schools and scout huts

u Painting and decorating

u Maintaining parks and gardens

u Sorting clothing in charity shops

u Cleaning planes and carrying out other maintenance at Elvington Air Museum.

Most of the work involves contact with members of the public. Before being assigned to a particular project, Joanne Atkin says, offenders are given a thorough risk assessment to make sure they pose no threat.

There are no hard-and-fast statistics about how effective community orders are at preventing re-offending. Nationally, according to Susan Lord of the National Probation Service, about one in two people who serve a community order will offend again.

But comparing this with re-offending rates for those who serve a period in prison is difficult, since the new-style community orders - which are more tailored to the needs of offenders than the old community sentences - have not been in operation for long enough.

There is evidence that a community order is more effective at preventing re-offending than a short jail term of four to six months, especially for low-level offences.

Under a community order, an offender can be required to attend rehabilitation sessions - perhaps to help them tackle drink or drugs problems - for up to three years, Susan Lord pointed out. If given a six month jail term, they would be out after three months, and could not be required to attend for further rehabilitation.

Community payback

Under a new scheme to be launched nationwide and in North Yorkshire next month, local communities are to be given more of a say in the kind of unpaid work that offenders do when serving community orders.

Community groups will be set up to feed through ideas, which could range from:

- Bringing derelict areas and buildings back into public use

- Clearing churchyards, country streams and unused allotments

- Repairing park benches and playground equipment

The Community Payback scheme, as it is to be known, will be officially launched in North Yorkshire in the week beginning November 21.

Updated: 09:19 Thursday, October 13, 2005