Thousands of criminals are treating community service sentences as optional – by simply refusing to start or abandoning them.
Ministry of Justice figures show courts in England and Wales issued 53,685 unpaid work orders in the year to March 2025 – yet 3,200 were never started and a third failed to complete the required hours.
As an alternative to custody, offenders can be given between 20 and 300 hours of unpaid work – such as litter picking, painting community facilities or gardening.
The figures heap further pressure on the Government to fix what the Commons Public Accounts Committee has described as a Probation Service ‘teetering on the brink’.
Tory MP Neil O’Brien, who obtained the figures, said: ‘The system is a joke – and thousands of criminals treat it as such.
‘People hear their sentence in court and know they can safely ignore it, if they choose.
‘Some knock off early while others never even bother to turn up.
‘If you’re a victim of one of their crimes, or the place where you live is affected, you’re going to wonder what’s become of justice in this country.’
Ministry of Justice figures show courts in England and Wales issued 53,685 unpaid work orders in the year to March 2025 – yet 3,200 were never started and a third failed to complete the required hours (Stock Image)
The Ministry of Justice said those who do not complete community service face electronic tagging, fines or recall to prison.
It said the Government has pledged an extra £700 million to the Probation Service and is recruiting 1,300 more probation officers this year.
Completion rates have improved marginally since 2021-22, when the Probation Service returned to public ownership.
Then, 8.4 per cent failed to show up and 40.7 per cent failed to complete their hours.
Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: ‘The Probation Service is failing.
‘The endpoint is demonstrated by our report showing the number of prisoners recalled to jail is at an all-time high.’
