| Community Service Orders have been available for about thirty years in Scotland. They provide an opportunity for people to carry out useful work for the community, either for community groups or needy individuals. About 250 West Lothian people each year are placed on Community Service Orders or Conditions of Unpaid Work attached to Probation Orders , as a direct alternative to a prison sentence. What is a Community Service Order? A Community Service Order (CSO) is a court order that requires an offender to carry out a number of hours of unpaid work for the benefit of the community. The number of hours is decided by the Court, and will be between 80 and 240 hours (300 hours if appearing on Indictment). What does a person have to do if they have been placed on a CSO? The person is expected to follow all instructions given by the Criminal Justice worker responsible for the Order. This may include attending for work arrangements, and also attending office appointments if there are problems with completing the hours of work that were ordered. Someone on a CSO is also expected by law to notify the Criminal Justice worker immediately of any change of address or of work arrangements (hours of employment). These are important, to ensure that we can continue to keep in touch with people and to make suitable arrangements for them. What sort of work may people do on a CSO? There is a range of opportunities available, including working with voluntary organisations (where workers will be supervised by a member of the Organisation) and in work teams, supervised by Community Work Order Supervisors. Work teams carry out a range of tasks, including painting and decorating, gardening, landscaping and environmental projects, furniture removals for a local charity, and helping patients from a local psychiatric unit who are taken on regular outings. Not all options will be available for everyone. The supervising officer will have to take into account the risk of someone offending again, what skills they have, when they can be available for unpaid work, and of course what places are currently available. How can people who work full-time carry out their CSO work? The Community Service by Offenders scheme is obliged by law to take into account any genuine demands made by a person's employment. This means that we have to make arrangements for people to carry out work at a time when they are not contracted to work for your employer. As a result of this, we have work opportunities available every day of the week, and most evenings. Please note, though, that in our planning with someone, while we will try to take into account any overtime that they are being asked to do by their employer, we may have to ask them to turn this down if that is necessary to allow them to carry out Community Service work. We are clearly not able to excuse anyone from Community Service work to carry out any employment that is illegal (such as "working on the side"). What happens if someone does not keep to the conditions of the order? As a CSO is intended only to be used where the court would have been otherwise considering custody, there is a clear disciplinary code that is applied to each order. The end result of non-compliance will be breach proceedings, and a high proportion of such proceedings end up in imprisonment. As with every court order, such situations are avoidable, and we always urge everyone on a court order to keep in touch with us about problems they are having. If circumstances change and someone cannot complete their order, what happens then? There is a separate process for taking orders back to court if someone is unable to finish the number of hours ordered by the court. This can be arranged either by the supervising officer or by the individual (or their solicitor). We have found that the courts will take a reasonable view of genuine problems. | 
