Community service under the spotlight

The public prosecution service has launched an investigation into the acceptibity of community service as an alternative sentence to jail, Trouw reports on Wednesday.


‘Society has a lot of doubts about community service and it is good to look again at public support,’ the department’s head Harm Brouwer said. He denied the service was bowing down to politicial and public pressure for tougher sentencing.
Earlier this week, the right-wing anti-immigration party PVV called for community service to be abolished.
Growing popularity
Last year, 35,400 adults were sentenced to community service, a four percentage point rise on 2004. Some 74% of juveniles now get community service, compared with 60% in 2004, the department says.
The last time community service was looked at in 1993, a large majority of the population supported the practise. ‘We live in other times and that justifies a new survey,’ Brouwer told Trouw. ‘Then the criminal justice system was being made more human… resocialisation was key.’

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