There has been recent talk from the Justice Department about a suitable punishment for offenders sentenced to community service being to serve their time building social housing. I have been in the construction industry for more than 30 years and have never regarded it as a punishment, although I admit there has been the odd day! Building is a skilled job in the main and although there are some tasks that are less so there is a necessary level of training required to ensure everybody remains safe. A building site as we all know is not the safest of places. The construction industry manages to kill or maim far too many people every year and adding unskilled unwilling individuals into the mix isn’t going to help, either the individual concerned or those who might get caught up in the resulting flack.
The whole idea leaves several unanswered questions.
Quite rightly an employer has an obligation to ensure a safe working environment, not helped by unwilling conscripts. What will be the outcome for the contractor forced to take a community service “volunteer” who is involved in or causes an accident that results in injury or worse?
Tasks carried out on building sites are currently performed by paid employees, how will it help the economy if they are thrown on the dole in order to make way for a convicted offender?
What have Social Housing landlords and their tenants done to justify being lumbered with a home built by conscripted unskilled labour.
Of course I may have got this entirely wrong, just maybe there is statistic somewhere that shows there are so many offenders from construction trades that this idea makes sense. However from my experience it is usually only the final invoice that tends to be regarded as criminal.
Martin Horsler
Joint Managing Director