Community service offenders still allowed to serve their unpaid work-from-home sentence a year after pandemic restrictions ended
- Criminals performed more than 136,000 hours of unpaid work at home in the last 10 months
- Tasks include making cards for charity and knitting hats or scarves for refugees.
- Data shows greater number of community hours at home in 2022 than lockdown
Offenders on community service still allowed to ‘work from home’, one year after pandemic restrictions ended.
Thieves, vandals, con artists and pickpockets have performed more than 136,000 hours of unpaid work from their own living rooms in the last ten months alone. Tasks have included making greeting cards for charities and knitting hats and scarves for refugees.
Last night, critics accused the government of insulting crime victims by failing to punish offenders. Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed said: “Everyone deserves to feel safe in their community, but anti-social thugs riot without facing consequences.”
It’s been a year since the Covid restrictions ended, but Justice Ministry data shows that the number of hours of community service at home has been higher in the past year than during the 2020 lockdown.
Community service came to a halt during the Covid lockdowns, leading to the development of a work-from-home scheme. Criminals would be sent a box of materials for a task, such as gluing sequins onto charity greeting cards.
Tasks have included making greeting cards for charities and knitting hats and scarves for refugees (Stock Image)
They would have to return the box with the complete products within a certain period.
Probation officers may issue penalties if work was not completed to the required standard or on time.
The data shows that 59,314 hours of unpaid work at home were completed from April 2020 to April 2021, when restrictions were most stringent. This jumped to 274,324 hours between April 2021 and April 2022. Since last April, while Britain has been free of Covid rules, 136,356 hours have been done at home.
Justice Minister Damian Hinds said the work-from-home scheme was introduced as a “temporary delivery method”. He added: “Probation regions have been required to phase out its use from September 2022.”
