ONLY A quarter of Angus residents say they have ever seen offenders carrying out community sentences.
The visibility issue has been highlighted in the latest report from the Angus Citizens’ Panel, whose survey revealed 77% of people in the county had never seen convicts doing unpaid work.
In a statement in the report, George Bowie, service manager for Angus Council’s Social Work Department, said there was a duty in law for Criminal Justice Social Work to gain feedback from the community.
He said: “In Angus, we take this duty seriously because we believe in the principle of offenders making payback to the community they offended in, so the community should have a say about what sort of things offenders might do.
“Offenders are sentenced to a specific number of hours of unpaid work which must be completed within a set timescale.
“Often, offenders are also sentenced to a period of supervision with a social worker and this goes hand-in-hand with the unpaid work element.”
Members of ACP were asked about their awareness of unpaid work in the community and what type of work they thought male and female offenders should carry out.
The survey showed there was good awareness about unpaid work in Angus, with 83.2% of respondents saying they knew about it.
However, most people said they had read about work projects in the local press rather than physically seeing them taking place.
Mr Bowie said: “This might be due to the fact that work squads are not automatically distinguishable from other squads of workers one might see in the community.
“We deduce from this that we need to make more visible the successful work that is undertaken.
“For example, by more often erecting plaques on site to show that offenders completed work projects, so members of the public are more aware of the contribution offenders make.”
Respondents generally favoured physical labour for men and less onerous physical tasks, such as gardening, for women.
The public thought it was important to provide both groups with skills training to help secure future employment.
However, there was a perceived nervousness about offenders being in caring roles, especially men.
Mr Bowie moved to reassure residents most offenders do not pose a risk to the public and those who do are not placed with vulnerable people.
He said: “For many people undertaking unpaid work, helping others is the thing they say helped them to reduce offending and provided a real sense of community awareness.
“Most offenders speak positively about being able to help older or more vulnerable people with, for example, furniture removal, decorating, gardening and snow clearing.”
ACP members came up with a range of suggestions for work activities to be considered in the New Year.
At present, work is under way to help local amateur sports clubs with renovation projects they would not otherwise have been able to carry out.
Offenders are also working alongside the country ranger service in some Angus parks on rough gardening and woodland work and on the development of a bike restoration project.
gbletcher@thecourier.co.uk