ABSTRACT
A key problem for those who wish to promote community-based penalties as credible alternatives to custody is that such penalties rely to a far greater extent than custodial establishments upon the cooperation or compliance of offenders to make them ‘work’ (though see Sparks et al. 1996). As Bottoms has observed, ‘effectiveness and compliance are, in the field of community penalties, topics that are inextricably linked’ (2001: 89). It is therefore remarkable that, despite a burgeoning literature on the effectiveness of community penalties – and a common finding of significant problems of attrition in respect of a variety of community-based penalties and specialist programmes (for example, Farrall 2002; Hough et al. 2003; Roberts 2004; Raynor 2004) – the topic of offenders’ compliance with such penalties has attracted relatively little in the way of empirical or theoretical attention (though see Ugwudike, this volume).
