The farcical story of my community service

Convicted of fraud, Nick Page did community service: drinking tea with workshy layabouts, supervised by useless probation officers

Afew years ago, I was convicted of forgery for signing both names on a joint mortgage, and received a sentence of 200 hours’ community service.

The first hour was a meeting, where I was told I’d be doing community service. The meeting took about eight minutes, but it counted for an hour. The second hour was a repeat of the first meeting, but with a different probation officer, because the first one had quit. This one only took four minutes.

Next came a course in Gloucester about community service. I turned up with three others at the office, as instructed. It was closed. I phoned; we should have been in Stroud, we were told, even though our letters said Gloucester. I offered to drive the others over but was told I couldn’t because of insurance. They sent a taxi.

At Stroud, I paid for the taxi because the probation service didn’t have an account, and the probation officer didn’t have cash. We watched a video about how to lift things safely. We did a numeracy test on which, worryingly, I scored 106 per cent. I also did a literacy test; I corrected the spelling on two questions. We broke for lunch at 12. I got stung by a wasp – so they sent me home at 1.15pm. Two weeks later, I did my first actual community service (of which, more later).

There is a definite divide in those doing unpaid work sentences. There are middle-class people who’ve screwed up, and little toerags who have been in the system for ever. The middle-class ones turn up with packed lunches, wearing their gardening clothes, do their hours and go. The toerags struggle to get up for 9am. The middle-class ones downplay their crimes; the toerags exaggerate theirs.

Twenty-two offenders were booked in on that first day, of whom 14 turned up, which was just as well because the two vans hold only eight people each. Some

days, there would be too many for the vans – so some would be dismissed, with an hour taken off for turning up, but most days there was less than a van full.

My first day was spent delivering those bin-bags you get from charities asking for clothes – or that’s how it should have been spent. We set off from the court at around 9.30am, to drive from Cheltenham to Gloucester to pick up the bags. Once there, we parked in a layby, fired up a camping stove and made tea.

We were then given bags and pens and told to mark them with ‘Wednesday’ for collection day. After we’d done the first batch, it became apparent that the ink was rubbing off. We drove back to Gloucester, collected different pens, had more tea, marked some bags again and then drove to a housing estate.

There, we were issued with safety boots for the hazardous task of entering front gardens; one lad refused to put them on because he had new socks. So he walked off.

At 12.30pm, we started delivering bags; at 1pm, we stopped for lunch, for an hour. I had to get permission to go into a café to use their loo. At 3pm we had more tea, at 4pm we packed up and I was home by 4.30pm, having taken another eight hours off my sentence.

The guy who walked off didn’t come back the following week, but did reappear three weeks later. He started his sentence the same day as me. I had 200 hours’ community service; he had 120 for criminal damage. He’d been sent back to court for absconding, and they’d added another 40 hours.

He turned up roughly one week in four. So he kept having hours added; when I’d completed my sentence, he still had 220 hours to go. He told me this was what he ‘normally’ did. When the total reached 300, he’d be given a custodial sentence. But, because his home circumstances were chaotic, the sentence would be revoked, subject to attending adult education classes.

On the same minibus was a French heart surgeon (caught driving while disqualified, in a rush to get to the wine merchant) who was contributing to a conference in Montreal via Skype and had to keep hiding to do so, and a chef who became a good friend and made my wedding cake.

The rest of my sentence (182 hours) was spent like this. I delivered those clothes bin-bags; I gardened at Prinknash Abbey (if you visit, please appreciate my pristine path-edging). I cleared brush at Westonbirt Arboretum – definitely not something that needed doing, but it was the best day out as it involved bonfires. Clearing a garden for a 90-year-old in social housing felt pretty good.

Decorating Insight Gloucestershire, a sight-loss charity in Cheltenham, also felt useful. They ran out of paint and money – so I talked Dulux into donating in order that we could finish. But somebody stole a watch and we had to leave.

I was the only one to turn up on my last day of community service. So we finished at lunchtime and I took my probation officer for a nice pub lunch.