The sentence of Community Work requires offenders to do unpaid work in the community for non-profit organisations as a way of making up for their offending.
Offenders are issued an instruction to report, which tells them where and when they must turn up to perform their community work hours. While serving community work sentences, offenders work:
Community work can be done anywhere in the community from parks and reserves to schools, marae, and churches. It can involve painting, gardening, building, graffiti cleaning, restoration, recycling, and more.
To work out how an offender will complete their sentence, Community Probation & Psychological Services (CPPS) staff consider the offence, the offender's personal circumstances, and their needs and skills. Once placed in an agency or work centre, CPPS staff manage the sentence to ensure the offender is attending and working in accordance with their sentence requirements. Sentences range from 40 hours to 400 hours and must be completed within a set time. A maximum sentence of 400 hours must be completed within two years. Shorter sentences have shorter timeframes.
If an offender does not fulfil their sentence, by not attending or by breaking the rules, they may be subject to formal warnings or charged with breaching community work and have to go back to court. If convicted, the offender may be fined up to $1000, sentenced to more community work or another community sentence or home detention or imprisoned for up to three months.
If an offender does not work to a satisfactory standard some of their hours (up to 10%) may not be counted against their sentence, and they will have to complete those hours again.
Some offenders may also be serving other sentences including home detention, community detention, supervision or intensive supervision. So as well as doing community work they may have to regularly report to a probation officer and attend programmes to address their offending.