In our criminal justice system, there is a place for sentencing an offender to perform community service instead of sentencing him/her to serve a jail term or pay a fine.
Community service is a type of alternative sentencing that has been approved or upheld to be effective in the criminal justice system around the world. Instead of sentencing an offender to serve a jail term or pay a fine, the court can sentence the offender to perform community service for the benefit of the aggrieved community especially when the offense committed by the offender is not “a very serious” one or a low-level crime.
The court has the discretion as to what community service they can order the offender but the sentence must bear some relationship to the crime.
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A judge can order community service in addition to, or in lieu of, other sentencing options, such as imprisonment, fines, probation, or restitution.
For instance, A person charged with driving against the traffic can be sentenced to be a traffic warden and control traffic for a period of time as community service instead of being sent to jail or asked to pay a fine.
Community service may not be as popular in Nigeria as it is in the western world but there’s a provision for a judge to order an offender to carry out some community service like sweeping the highway, cleaning public spaces, working in public institutions without pay instead of being sent to jail or asked to pay fine. It is provided for in the Nigerian criminal justice system. For instance, in Nigeria, an internet fraudster was recently sentenced to sweep and clean a church in Abuja as a lesser punishment for the fact that the offender pled guilty and has shown remorse for the crime of internet fraud he was charged with, also Funke Akindele, the popular Nollywood producer/ actress was in 2020 sentenced and ordered to sweep and clean up a public place for some time as a punishment for her violating the covid 19 lockdown rule at the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic.
The determining factor before an offender is ordered to carry out a community service is that the offense must be a “not so serious” offense. Community service can not be ordered for a capital offense or some other serious offense like armed robbery or kidnapping and the community service is ordered so as to benefit the society that was offended by the act of the offender.
Community service is typically unavailable for serious offenses punishable by death or life imprisonment.
Most importantly, Community service is ordered for the benefit of the aggrieved community. For example, a person that is caught littering an environment may be ordered to sweep the area for a particular period of time.
In the western world where it is mostly adopted, an offender may be sentenced to work at an animal shelter or a homeless shelter, assist in road cleanup, or give speeches at schools or to groups aimed at showing the dangers of the behavior involved in the crime.