A SECONDARY school teacher has been one of 59 people sentenced to carry out community service since the programme was first introduced 10 months ago, the House Human Rights Committee heard yesterday.
Reviewing the progress of the programme, the committee heard from Welfare Department official Toulla Michaelidou that 48 of the court orders were handed down by judges in Larnaca, eight in Nicosia, three in Limassol but none in Paphos. There are another 23 cases currently under consideration.
While most of the offenders range in age from 16 to 18, one teacher, who was carrying out illegal private lessons in the afternoons, opted for the supervised community service. Michaelidou said his punishment was to teach certain courses free of charge in the community, while retaining his job as a teacher in a school.
Overall, committee members said they were happy with the way the programme was going, especially considering the overcrowding of the Nicosia Central Prisons. However, concern was expressed that only the Larnaca court seemed to have seriously taken the programme on board.
Michaelidou said there were currently nine full-time supervisors attached to the programme.
Comparing the cost of incarcerating someone and implementing a community-service order, Michaelidou said it cost over £5,000 to keep someone in prison for three months, whereas the cost of supervising community service amounts to only £150.
“It is much more financially viable than imprisonment,” she said. She added that currently the number of inmates at the Nicosia prisons was 486, while the building has a capacity of only 340.
Commenting on the programme so far, Committee chairman Sophoclis Fittis said community service was to be welcomed because not only did it provide a means of punishment, but it was also a system that benefited society as a whole.
However, he expressed concern that the courts in Paphos did not seem to have taken it on board at all, while Nicosia and Limassol were only using the option on a limited basis.
“So far the indications are encouraging,” he said. “The main problem seems to be that certain courts have not adopted it completely, despite the efforts of the Welfare Department and the Ministry of Justice to inform the particular judges.”
The scheme, which involves convicts working in public parks, libraries, old people’s homes and other public institutions, applies to those sentenced to six months or less. It is designed mainly to assist in the social rehabilitation of young offenders but might be extended to sentences of up to a year if it is successful.
It is also designed to cut down on the number of juveniles being sent to the main prison, and to ease the current overcrowding.
Under the programme, the courts are the ones to determine where each offender carries out the necessary community service, based on a report from the Welfare Department.
