Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 27, 1995                   TAG: 9508250060
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DOING TIME BY DOING GOOD

For starters, if all the locals eligible for jail sentences were locked up, a jail about the size of the Roanoke Civic Center would have to be built to hold them. Attendant costs would rise considerably.

On top of that, the payrolls of local governments would mushroom. Scores of maintenance tasks - painting, mowing, litter cleanup, etc., at public facilities - are done not only by city and county workers, but also by lawbreakers sentenced by the courts to community service.

At dozens of charitable agencies, too, many such chores are carried out by petty crooks. As an unexpected benefit, a few of these involuntary volunteers try it and like it. They become committed to an agency's mission, and continue to work for it after serving their court-mandated hours.

The concept of community service as an alternative to incarceration for nonviolent criminals has grown increasingly popular with judges and other law-enforcement officials for the simple reason that it is cost-effective. If, for example, all those convicted of possession of illegal drugs were sentenced to jail or prison, not only would society pay for their housing, food, medical needs, etc., while they are in the pokey. We might end up supporting their families as well.

There can be problems. Professional staffers of community-based corrections programs or off-duty law-enforcement officers (paid in this case by ``user fees'' imposed on the convicts) supervise work projects such as those in local, state or national parks - where, incidentally, a banker or doctor convicted of drunken driving will do the same grunt work as others. But a charitable agency's personnel are usually expected to supervise individuals serving their time at the agency, and these personnel may feel uncomfortable or burdened in the role of warden. Training sessions offered by the community-corrections programs can help in this regard.

For some poorly educated, unskilled or mentally disabled individuals, make-work has to be concocted. Those who oversee court-imposed community-service sentences say, however, that it's the rare individual who can't do some sort of meaningful work - envelope-stuffing, say - that frees up others for more complicated tasks. And even the most menial assignment can help instill a sense of self-worth and an appreciation of work's value that was missing before.

Work of almost any kind holds more redemptive power than sitting in a taxpayer-funded cell watching television.

No one suggests that community service is the perfect answer to jail overcrowding or other crime-and-punishment dilemmas. Certainly, violent and repeat offenders need to be put away, and for long periods of time. For many offenders, though, alternative sentencing is a good alternative.

Where most corrections programs drain public resources, community service can do the opposite. Jim Phipps of Salem, director of Virginia's Court-Community Corrections for this area, estimates that community service returns $9.74 in public value for every dollar spent on it. It's a form of restitution to the victims of crime - all of us.