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Criticism of community service vests

01/12/2008

Plans to make offenders doing community service wear high-visibility vests have been criticised by probation officers.

The government claims that the fluorescent orange vests with "community payback" written on the back will improve the public's confidence in the effectiveness of community sentences.

However, those in opposition to the vests, including the civil rights group Liberty, claim that they could make offenders the subject of future attacks.

"The government is claiming that this initiative is being introduced to raise public awareness," Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers' union, said.

"That can be done in other ways, for example by a plaque after the work is completed. The real intention of the vests is to make the government look tougher on crime and to demean the offenders."

The director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, also criticised the scheme, suggesting that the last thing the offenders needed was to be degraded further.

"We hope that no-one is harmed as a result of this medieval justice - it's cheap and nasty, not the sort of thing we want in a civilised country," she said.

Justice secretary Jack Straw, however, defended the vests claiming that probation managers could withdrawal the vests if there was a fear of attacks.

"The purpose of having these high-visibility jackets is, above all, to strengthen the confidence of the public in community punishments because too few of the public believe at the moment these are effective and are other than a soft option," he told the Today programme.