You break the law and go to prison for a felony, you forfeit "monetary compensation".
Simple.
Criminals don't deserve one cent of "back pay" because they were incarcerated.
"Hey, Mr. Sex Offender! We're gonna give you monetary compensation because you committed sex offenses and were incarcerated!"
Yeah, no. Not even once.
I work in a community kitchen feeding the homeless & less unfortunate.
We utilise a lot of free labour from people who have been convicted & are required to do x amount of community service rather than going to jail.
What I don't understand is that they're only allowed to do several hours a week...one guy had 300 hours of community service but was only allowed to do 5 hours, one day a week...this dragged on for 60 weeks. He had to defer his studies, lost his full time job & went on un-employed benefits.
I don't understand why people on community service can't fulfil their hours in one stretch instead of breaking it up into small lumps every week?
Yeah I know the argument is they're being punished but if it disrupts their ability to get back into society...unable to study or maintain a full time job because of 5 hours a week of community service just pushes the strain on the taxpayer.
I mean you get sentenced to jail, it's not like you can do 5 hours a week of prison time until your sentence is complete.
Originally posted by Impediment
You break the law and go to prison for a felony, you forfeit "monetary compensation".Simple.
Criminals don't deserve one cent of "back pay" because they were incarcerated.
"Hey, Mr. Sex Offender! We're gonna give you monetary compensation because you committed sex offenses and were incarcerated!"
Yeah, no. Not even once.
I think what's being said here is that if you are imprisoned, serve your sentence, rejoin society and are then wrongfully imprisoned for a totally separate offence any amount of time later, you are ineligible for any kind of compensation due to your having been in prison once before. Seems that way anyway.
Originally posted by Esau Cairn
I work in a community kitchen feeding the homeless & less unfortunate.We utilise a lot of free labour from people who have been convicted & are required to do x amount of community service rather than going to jail.
What I don't understand is that they're only allowed to do several hours a week...one guy had 300 hours of community service but was only allowed to do 5 hours, one day a week...this dragged on for 60 weeks. He had to defer his studies, lost his full time job & went on un-employed benefits.
I don't understand why people on community service can't fulfil their hours in one stretch instead of breaking it up into small lumps every week?
Yeah I know the argument is they're being punished but if it disrupts their ability to get back into society...unable to study or maintain a full time job because of 5 hours a week of community service just pushes the strain on the taxpayer.
I mean you get sentenced to jail, it's not like you can do 5 hours a week of prison time until your sentence is complete.
In the U.K. you can split the time as you see fit within reason so as to not interfere with work obligations too much.
Originally posted by Esau Cairn
Nah, here in Australia it's non-negotiable.The hours & days are set by your parole officer with no consideration given.
I suppose an argument can be made for both the considerate and non-considerate approach to community service. Is there a chance that you could get a cool parole officer who'd be like; 'Oh you work all week? How about you do Saturdays, Sundays and ask your boss if you can have Wednesdays off? When I did community service they were seriously lax about almost everything. This would be the typical day:
9:00-9:30. Turn up and sign in, have a coffee and read the paper.
9:30-10:00. Officers turn up and give you your assignment for the day.
10:00-10:30. Get into the vans and head to the job.
10:30-11:00. Arrive, open up the facilities room, (if there's one on site.) have another coffee and perhaps part of your packed lunch and talk about football or back-in-the-day type stuff.
11:00-12:30. Trim hedges and brambles in a public park.
12:30-1:30. Lunch.
1:30-2:15. More trimming hedges and brambles.
2:15-2:45. Another coffee break.
2:45-3:30. More trimming.
3:30-4:00. Head back to the main centre.
4:00-4:30. Hang around for a bit then sign out for the day.
It was ridiculously easy, the only hard part was dragging yourself there, this was a few years ago now though, I've heard it's been or getting privatized soon and once you make it about profit things change dramatically.
The hedges was just an example really, there were other things you could do, packing food in a foodbank distribution centre, there was also a bicycle workshop for the City-Bike program here in Liverpool. It was so laid back that some people would go home if the guy who ran the workshop wasn't in that day and they would get an hour knocked off their community service. I didn't even do my full hours, I still had a day to go and a woman in the place came up to me and said; 'Your last day today, eh' in a really obvious 'wink wink' scenario. Which was quite commonplace I learned.
Originally posted by Esau Cairn
Nah, here in Australia it's non-negotiable.The hours & days are set by your parole officer with no consideration given.
I think here in the US, they do the same thing.
But ex cons have little trouble getting low end work, because of the same reason they hire illegals:
They NEED the job, aren't in a position to drag their feet, quit, or negotiate, make good low wage slaves, ect..
There's probably tax incentives and such, too.
Originally posted by samhain
I suppose an argument can be made for both the considerate and non-considerate approach to community service. Is there a chance that you could get a cool parole officer who'd be like; 'Oh you work all week? How about you do Saturdays, Sundays and ask your boss if you can have Wednesdays off? When I did community service they were seriously lax about almost everything. This would be the typical day:
At the kitchen I work at, it really comes down to the respect they show us to how they're treated. The good community service guys understand they're fortunate not to have ended up in jail. They understand that helping out & keeping themselves busy makes the hours fly by quicker.
Then you have the lazy ones. They'll sign in then spend the day hiding & avoiding all work. We can't be bothered dealing with their attitude so we ignore them & they get a negative report back to their parole officer.
Same goes for the ones on methadone, they tend to crash half way thru the day & we usually find them nodding away in the store room.
The parole officer assigned to our site has a real Jekyll/Hyde personality...hates her job, hates men, hates her life.
She recently berated us for the way we signed off on the com/serv guys. They finish at 3:30pm so we sign them all off at 3:30pm.
The parole officer pointed out that that was impossible...we should be signing them off as 3:30, 3:31, 3:32...