He looked almost celebratory as Ethel Malembetsa of Bwaila Primary School in Zomba lent him an axe and panga knife to use in accomplishing the task at hand —chopping firewood.
The man, wearing his own clothes in spite of the fact that he was an offender who had been convicted by a court of law, was sent to the primary school to fulfill his obligation as an offender ordered to do community service for his mischief in society.
“We later discovered that he was hiding some firewood along a river close by and selling the same at night. He, then, suddenly disappeared with my panga knife and axe and, yet, the axe and panga knife were my personal property and did not belong to the school,” recollects Malembetsa.
Malembetsa tried to track the convict down, and took the trouble of visiting the run-away convict’s Makwinja Village in Zomba but to no avail.
“What I discovered was that he did not even have what one would call a proper house,” she says.
That is three years ago and the convict has never been tracked down.
In another case, an offender who had been ordered to perform community service gave the impression of ‘a good boy’ when he reported for ‘service’ at Mchengawedi Primary School in Zomba in 2014.
“We reported to those who were responsible for posting him but, up to now, nobody knows where he is,” says Mchengawedi Primary School head teacher, Alick Mussa.
In yet another case of community service gone wrong, one convict appeared for a few days to honour his community service obligation at Mponda Primary School in, again, Zomba, “but disappeared days later”, in the words of Mponda Zone Primary Education Advisor, Catherine Kapeni.
With such cases, it is easy to dismiss community service as a holding cell without lock and key. But Judicial Community Service deputy director, Albert Phikani, observes that community service is a “highly successful” concept.
“Implementation of community service, or suspended sentence in other words, as a mechanism of reforming, rehabilitating and restoring first and repeat offenders started in 1999 and, 17 years down the line, we have made headway in trying to prevent institutionalisation type of supervising offenders,” says Phikani.
“For example, every year we handle 10 percent of the total population in prison. That is, we are preventing cases where 10 percent of convicts go to prison. That way, we are playing a role in decongesting prisons while, at the same time, improving human rights standards in the country’s prisons.”
Embracing community service
However, Phikani acknowledges that it may take some time before community service gets the nation’s full nod.
“To begin with, we seem to have an obsession with custodial sentences. The Penal Code, in Section 25 (14) provides for a number of options, including community service, caution, police probation, fine, among others, but you will find that the courts prefer custodial sentence to community service due to the culture of imprisonment. You find people being sent to prison for petty offences.
“Again, community service suffers from misconceptions as some stakeholders regard it as a ‘soft’ sentence. There is, therefore, the challenge of abscondment, which is prevalent in urban areas. In rural areas, communities are knitted together and are able to follow up on cases of abscondment— which is not the case in town, where people are not as closely knitted as in rural areas,” says Phikani.
He, however, observes that every system, including the healthcare delivery system, has what he calls deviants.
“In statistics, one always expects deviant variants and, in the case of community service, this is prevalent among urban dwellers where some offenders live in squatters and, even when they are serving community service, have needs to take care of. But, then, we cannot always send to prison those who use foul language, commit offences bordering on petty thefts or perpetuate conduct likely to cause breach of peace.
“Community service does not apply to those who commit serious crimes; it only applies to those whose sentences range from one month to 12 months and we conduct enquiries to ascertain one’s suitability for community service. Among other eligibility criteria, we look at one’s position in society in terms of people’s perceptions of the individual, we ensure that one is a first-time offender, and that one has an established place of residence. In this regard, supervisors play a crucial role in ensuring that community service is effective,” says Phikani.
He adds that the other challenge pertains to the fact that community-service is a government-driven initiative and, as such, lacks the force that goes with donor funding.
Road to acceptance
Kapeni, who is one of the supervisors recently trained by the Judicial Community Service, observes that community service may work effectively if supervisors develop a good networking system.
“We now have the equipment, as well as knowledge, to help us in our work. Let us share experiences. In the past, people learned [about community service] but often found themselves in a situation where they did not know what to do. Therefore, networking is a solution in such cases,” says Kapeni.
Mussa, on the other hand, opines that there is need to prioritise feedback when those who get the suspended prison sentence of community service bolt and are reported to those responsible for handling them.
“Otherwise, it is frustrating when such cases [of deviants] are reported and we do not get any feedback,” says Mussa.
Malembetsa concurs, and adds that maintaining people’s trust in those serving community services hinges on mutual understanding.
‘We can always learn from experience. In our case, we have opened another chapter and we are ready to work with those doing community service. As I am speaking, we have received another person who is doing community service. We are more knowledgeable and careful this time and this is the third week after welcoming him. We have had no problems,’ says Malembetsa.
Indeed, another individual is doing community service at Matawale Health Centre in Zomba and, gauging by the way she attends to her tasks, signs of bolting do not register on that tender face.
For Phikani, though, one other area that warrants attention in a bid to fill up holes plaguing implementation of community service orders is sensitization.
“There is need, for example, to sensitise magistrates on the need to consider the option of giving community sentence orders. From the look of things, some magistrates give the impression that they get satisfied that they have done a good job once they mete out a custodial sentence. The fact is that there are a number of options.
“We have sensitised them but there is, clearly, a pressing need to continue sensitising them. If magistrates do not seem to understand these things, what more with ordinary people and those ordered to do community service? “wonders Phikani.
As he wonders aloud, someone in another part of Malawi could also be wondering: Who bolts next?
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