Community service or social service is a mode of punishment provide by the law which the offender can escape imprisonment or fines. Community service acts as an alternative to the harsh criminal punishment. Generally, community service is handed down by a judge or magistrate to the first-timer offender or teenage offender. This punishment can also be handed down in the case of minor offences for example traffic violations, petty theft, and other nonviolent offenses. The offender is required to perform unpaid work or other activity in the community under the direction of a probation officer or supervisor. Among the community work undergo by the offender are cleaning up roadside or parks, attending educational programs and presenting speeches and seminars concerning the negative effect of crime.
The community work may be a specific community service which imposed a particular service, depending on the types and degrees of the offences. For instance, offender of littering will have to clean a park so that he understands the effect of littering, thus change his perception towards littering. Meaning to say, community service is designed to ensure that the guilty party is punished in some way other than simply paying a fine which can be nothing in the way of a deterrent. Many individuals convicted of a crime and have to pay a fine simply done the same offence again and this leads only to their continual committing of crime. The community service is imposed for a specific period which measured by hour of service. The hours imposed is vary, depending on the nature of the offence.
Community service is a healthy alternative mode of punishment and has lots of advantages. It is seen to benefit a country and the government in so many ways. Firstly, community service provide for less expensive punishment compared to imprisonment. It takes a lot of money to send a person