COMMUNITY PAYBACK SUCCESS: CALL FOR RESIDENTS IN LANCASHIRE TO IDENTIFY MORE WORK FOR OFFENDERS
02 Feb 2010
Local residents are being asked to nominate further ideas for Community Payback projects following the success of recent voting that formed part of the Government’s ‘Justice Seen Justice Done’ campaign.
Over 1000 people voted last summer for what Community Payback they wanted to see offenders in Lancashire carry out.
The three week vote via the directgov website was to raise awareness of Community Payback, run by Lancashire Probation Trust, as a tough punishment for criminals and to give people a chance to have a say on what projects they would like to see worked on for the benefit of the local area. This followed the launch of branded high visibility orange jackets that offenders on Community Payback must now wear.
This latest phase of the campaign urges communities to identify other projects in their neighbourhoods by going to the directgov website: http://communitypayback.direct.gov.uk/.
Area Director, Geri Byrne-Thompson said: “When the public votes for the areas they want to see being cleaned up, we know Community Payback is doing what it is designed to do. We are capable of working on a wide variety of not-for-profit projects and are always looking for new ways for offenders to do work of benefit to the community.”
The roll-out of visible Community Payback across England and Wales is built on a recommendation from the Government’s Crime and Justice Adviser Louise Casey’s review, 'Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime', outlining the importance of justice being visible. It seeks to improve public confidence in Community Payback as a punishment so that if people see real, tough consequences for breaking the law, they will be more likely to come forward to report crime, give evidence in court and support their neighbours to do the same.
Last year over 2500 offenders were sentenced to Community Payback in Lancashire and nearly 225,000 hours of physical work were undertaken on behalf of their communities to pay back for their crimes.
In the initial wave of the Justice Seen Justice Done campaign, residents in Lancashire voted for offenders to work on three different projects in separate areas of the county: Moor Park, Preston; Olive Lane, Blackburn and Ibbison Court, Blackpool.
To suggest projects in Lancashire click the link below
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