Canada
In Nova Scotia, community service is around 93-95% successful and has a very low number of repeaters.  In Lunenburg and Queens Counties alone, the program has allowed over 115,000 hours of service to be provided to the community, which at a rate of $5.00/hour would equal over $750,000 being put into the community.

The Youth Alternative Society in Nova Scotia facilitates mediation sessions and establishes contacts with the community for youth who have been involved in the criminal justice system.  The mediation sessions are used to set agreements between the youth, victims, their families, and the community on what the youth will do to repair the damage done by their actions.

In Quebec, community service orders are imposed by Probation Services.  Before the order can be given an assessment of eligibility is administered.  The assessment looks at reliability, attitude, motivation, as well as physical and mental capacities.  This assessment is meant to show whether community service would be beneficial to the offender’s reintegration into society.  If the offender is deemed suitable, the probation officer discusses with the offender the types of program they might be interested in.  The probation officer then gives the offender a list of local nonprofit organizations and the offender is expected to make the initial contacts on their own.

United States
In the United States, the community service history dates back to 1966 when California imposed community service orders aimed at traffic law violators.  In 1976, this law expanded to include a wider variety of adult offenses and in 1978 expanded to include juveniles.  In the United State’s criminal justice system, community service is a component of intermediate sanctions, which also include: home confinement, boot camps, and intensive supervision programs.  Community service is used in the following ways throughout the US: as a “stand alone” sentence; as a condition of pretrial release or parole; instead of prosecution; but mostly as a condition of probation.

There are many varying programs and organizations throughout the United States that promote restorative community justice.  The following are some examples:

• Oregon

In Multnomah County, Oregon, there is a Department of Community Justice that focuses its efforts on promoting public safety while preventing recidivism among both juveniles and adults.  The program uses a “balance of supervision, services, and sanctions.”  The mission of this department is to hold offenders accountable in ways that benefit the community and the offender.  Some of the values of the organization include professionalism, strong families, restitution to victims and communities, collaborative relationships, change and rehabilitation.
o Deschutes County, Oregon, also has a Department of Community Justice, which arranges programs for formerly incarcerated persons to provide services to the elderly, such as cutting and delivering firewood during the winter months, as well as working with community members on various community projects.

• Minnesota’s “Sentenced To Service Brigade”

In Minnesota, the Department of Corrections conducts what is called the “Sentencing to Service” program.  The program was developed after a statute was passed in 1986 that urged the use of intermediate sanctions.  For over a decade the program has employed incarcerated persons and parolees in a variety of direct service projects and public works.  Between its establishment in 1986 and an assessment in 2003, the “Sentenced to Service Brigade” had provided over 9 million hours of labor to the local communities.  The following pie charts show the reason offenders were placed in the program and the skills offenders have reported gaining:

Reason for Being in the Program

Reason	Percentage
To Pay Off a Fine	29%
Supervision Fees	1%
Fine and Jail Time Both	14%
Reduced Jail Time	41%
Condition of Probation	15%

 

Skills Gained Through The Program:

Skill Gained	Percentage
Carpentry	20%
Landscaping	19%
Painting	16%
Tree Cutting	16%
Other	29%

• Andrew Glover Youth Program

A program that focuses on avoiding youth incarceration is the Andrew Glover Youth Program.  This program is based in New York City and involves a three fold mission: to provide the overloaded court system with an alternative to incarceration for youths, to intervene and reclaim young people from lives of crime, and to make East Harlem and the Lower East Side a safer community for everyone. 

This program is dedicated to the work of Officer Andrew Glover, who not only worked as a police officer in NYC, but also helped kids who had been given up on by society.  The program looks to help youth accept responsibility for their lives and to teach juveniles to live in a respectful, law abiding manner. 

There are three components that make up the program: court advocacy, the Robert Siegal and East Harlem Centers, and youth workers.  Court advocacy refers to a location that provides support and counseling for youth who have been involved in crimes.  The Robert Siegal and East Harlem Centers serve as locations where troubled youth can take refuge, as well as provide recreational and educational programs.   Finally, youth workers are assigned to all juveniles participating in the program.  The workers help to establish a rehabilitation plan that will best benefit each individual youth. 

This program has not only proven more cost effective than incarceration, with the imprisonment of a youth costing around $78,000 and the program only costing around $1800, but has also gained respect among judges and other court officials.  For example, Judge Alain Bourgeois says that the Andrew Glover Youth Program is “a program that really works. The only one [he] knows that does.”

• Cleveland’s “Redcoat Brigade”

Another program is the Cleveland’s Redcoat Brigade, which was developed by a faith-based group to place offenders who are being released from incarceration into programs that provide services to youth and elderly persons in the inner city.