Debate on community service

  We have often heard that the welfare state supports the lazy, although there is no empirical evidence for such a thing, or there are no recorded refusals of appropriate work or work referrals from the Employment Service. So far, we have encountered the paradigm of community service as a possible milder form of serving a sentence for a criminal offense. In the EU, community service is a generally accepted alternative to prison. The same is true in the USA. In our country, however, there has been a tendency to condition social assistance with community service.

Even today, prisoners, or perpetrators of criminal offenses for whom they have been finally sentenced to prison, are not obliged to work, although they could consider that they are housed and fed for free. Let's leave aside free access to computers, fitness centers, playgrounds, and the like.  Prisoners are completely free to decide to work, although work is mostly available in the prison laundry, kitchen and the like, and they are also supposed to be paid for this work. They can also serve their sentence with community service. In Slovenia, this is stipulated in Article 86 of the Criminal Code.

Main conditions for serving a sentence with work:

Length of sentence: The court may replace a prison sentence with work only if the sentence imposed is less than two years of imprisonment. Type of crime: This option is strictly prohibited for crimes against sexual integrity.

Calculation of hours: One day of imprisonment is converted into two hours of work. The total number of hours of work must be between 80 and 480 hours.

Time limit: The convict must complete the entire work within a maximum period of two years from the time the judgment becomes enforceable.

Selection process and performance of work

Proposal to the court: The convict or his/her defense attorney must submit a proposal to the court for the replacement of the prison sentence with work.  According to the Constitutional Court's decision, this can be proposed before the start of or even during the serving of the prison sentence.

Work organization: If the court approves the proposal, the Probation Administration takes over the procedure. It selects a suitable non-profit organization (e.g. the Red Cross, a nursing home, an animal shelter, a library).

Coordination: Work is organized in such a way that the convict can continue to go to his regular job or school. Community service is performed free of charge. If the convict does not perform the work conscientiously, violates agreements or does not complete the specified hours within the deadline, the court revokes this option and the person must serve the remainder of the sentence in prison. 

A convicted person may, within fifteen days of the judgment becoming final, file a proposal that the prison sentence be served by performing community service. Community service is supposed to be a legal alternative to serving a prison sentence. Community service is an alternative to custodial imprisonment, imprisonment, namely as an option in the settlement procedure or in the deferred prosecution procedure. 

 If an individual receives a fine for a misdemeanor and is unable to pay it, they can apply for community service as long as the daily amount is up to 360 euros.

Amount requirement: The fine and procedural costs must amount to at least 360 euros.

Financial status: The offender must prove that they cannot pay the fine. The court approves the proposal if the person meets the conditions for free legal aid.

Calculation of hours: One hour of work is determined for every 10 euros of fine started.

Limitation of hours: The assigned work can last a minimum of 30 and a maximum of 400 hours.

Time for completion: The work must be completed within a maximum of six months from the start of enforcement. 

Of course, we are very little familiar with such compensation for a criminal offense and/or compensation for damage to property and/or health and/or fines imposed, since most of those who are socially vulnerable have not paid them so far if they have proven material vulnerability.

 According to the new mentality and paradigm of unemployment, an unemployed person who has not been proven to refuse work despite being qualified for work may now be treated worse than the perpetrators of criminal acts described in the Criminal Code. For perpetrators of criminal acts, it is not mandatory to accept socially beneficial unpaid work, even if they have caused social damage or failed to pay a fine, etc. It will also be difficult for you to get graffiti removed from your wall in private, for example.

Such tendencies towards free work or work for social assistance, which is not income, would most likely be a new state solution to reduce the budget funds for social affairs for unemployed persons and a very questionable unequal treatment of citizens in terms of paid work for all workers. It is also a good question whether the state would expand the circle of beneficiaries or beneficiaries of free socially useful work or even allocate additional hours or even reduce employees in the public sector, or in state and municipal services, on this account. In any case, social security contributions will not be lower or even abolished because of this, not only because of other uses of public funds for social security, such as: child benefits, care allowances, exemption from kindergarten fees, food for children and, last but not least, the allocation of non-profit or social housing and rental subsidies. Perhaps this would also be a way of domestic national saving for generous assistance outside the EU and NATO.


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