Community Payback Consultation 2024

Every year the City of Edinburgh Council’s justice services conducts a Community Payback consultation to gather the public’s views on Community Payback Orders (CPO) which are given by the Court to people as an alternative to a prison sentence, to pay for their crimes. We asked about the unpaid work part of a CPO; this is when an individual who has committed an offence does unpaid work in the community.

We asked about general awareness of CPOs and unpaid work.

We asked whether you thought unpaid work gave people the opportunity to pay for their crimes.

We asked for your suggestions about community projects or organisations that could benefit from unpaid work.

We received 24 responses for the 2024 consultation.

The majority of respondents (83%) were fully aware of CPOs, with 17% having some awareness. No respondents had no awareness of CPOs.

There was a high level of awareness of unpaid work with 100% of respondents stating they were either fully or partly aware of unpaid work and no respondents stating they had no awareness.

46% of respondents thought that community payback gave people who have committed offences the opportunity to pay for their crimes with 50% thinking that it partly gave people that opportunity. 1% of respondents disagreed, believing that unpaid work did not present the opportunity to pay back to the community for crimes committed.

The level of public awareness relating to unpaid work and community payback is high. There is also high confidence in payback giving people the opportunity to repay the community for the crime(s) they have committed.

There was less certainty around work completed in the community being worthwhile, which indicates the need to raise awareness of the value of community payback across communities. To highlight the range of projects carried out as part of unpaid work, evidence is being collated to form a report which will be published on the Council’s community justice public webpage in the Spring of 2025. The report will include quotes from the beneficiaries of unpaid work and examples of projects completed.

The Council’s community justice webpage also allows for members of the public to submit suggestions for unpaid work projects for consideration by the unpaid work team throughout the year, not just as part of a consultation.  

Justice services would like to thank everyone who took part in the consultation.