Resources for those involved in
court-ordered community service:
for officers of the court, for host
organizations, & for those who have been court-ordered
to do community service
Please see the disclaimer at the end of this page.
Please note that the page Advice for those assigning
or supervising court-ordered community service, a resource
is for judges, probation officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys,
and other criminal justice practitioners that are involved in
assigning and supervising court-ordered community service, has
moved here.
Intro:
Under 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(12), courts in the USA may provide that
the defendant “work in community service as directed by the
court.” Similar laws can be found in a growing number of
countries, including the United Kingdom, Ghana, India, Kenya,
Malaysia, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and
Zimbabwe.
Mandatory community service or a "Court Referral Program" is an
alternate sentencing option for Superior, Municipal, Traffic and
Juvenile Courts in the USA, and this is pretty much the same
pattern followed in other countries. Community service is
considered restitution by an offender through helping his or her
community, through a volunteering (unpaid work) experience with a
nonprofit, government program and, sometimes, a religious
organization. The service means actions, activity,
engagement -- doing something that needs to be done and
that helps a community or a cause.
Mandatory community service in the USA is also becoming a
requirement for people receiving government assistance for
housing, food and medical care, including people receiving
unemployment benfits. Note that while it is becoming a requirement
for low income people, it is NOT a requirement for for-profit
corporations that receive government assitance and tax breaks.
Anyway...
According to Probation and Pretrial Services - Supervision,
a section on a web site maintained by the Administrative Office of
the U.S. Courts on behalf of the Federal Judiciary, the benefits
of this kind of community service are supposed to be that it
- Requires people on supervision to give
something back to society.
- Gives them an opportunity to get work
experience, job skills, and references.
- Gives the community free labor and
provides services that otherwise might not be available due to
lack of funding
We'll touch on that idea of "free labor" (which it's not) later
on this page.
The aforementioned US federal web site also has a section called
Chapter 3: Community Service (Probation and
Supervised Release Conditions) that says:
Community service is a versatile condition that can serve
multiple purposes. It can, for example, serve as the publicly
discernible penalty in probation cases or as a negative
consequence for noncompliance with conditions of supervision, as
a controlling strategy that requires defendants to be
productively occupied, or as a correctional strategy that
provides a way for defendants to acquire job readiness skills
and job experience or broaden their network of associates in a
more productive direction. In addition to the specific
sentencing purpose to be served, the desired by-product of
community service is always to benefit the community.
Too often, none of these goals are happening via court-ordered
community service. Here's why:
- The list
of nonprofits given to those given court-ordered community
service hasn't been updated in years and some of the nonprofits
have plenty of volunteers already, or no longer accept people
doing volunteer (unpaid) service because of a court order, or
even no longer exist.
- The
volunteering that the recommended nonprofits on that list do
have is available only during regularly work hours.
- The
nonprofits don't have the funding or training to involve these
people in volunteer roles (volunteers are not free!).
- The
person who has to obtain court-ordered community service has no
idea how the process works, even what to say when calling a
nonprofit to sign up to volunteer. They need more
guidance.
This needs to change.
Why I care
I research volunteer engagement practices and volunteering, with
an eye to what the best practices are for nonprofits, government
programs and others to engage volunteers, I write and do trainings
on what I learn, I am usually working with a nonprofit in a role
where I am recruiting and supporting volunteers myself, and I am a
volunteer myself.
- In the
role of manager of volunteers, I have been contacted by people
that need to volunteer in order to fulfill court-ordered
community service, and my experiences with those folks has been
largely positive: none who have managed to make it through my
screening process have ever let me down as a volunteer and, in
fact, all have done at least a bit more number of hours with me
than they were required to.
- In
addition, I have seen people posting on various online
communities who need such hours and I have been contacted by
them directly as well, and often, I'm the only person that's
given them the full guidance they need. Most say that they
haven't gotten much guidance on finding community service, and
they appreciate both how I treat them and the detailed
information I give them.
- I've
also heard from folks
who have been ripped off by unscrupulous hucksters who
say, in return for money, they will give a person desperate for
hours for the court a letter saying that the person did those
hours with a nonprofit - and not only do most courts not accept
this and the person gets into even more trouble, but it sullies
the concept of virtual voiunteering, a very real and very
important form of volunteering.
I want better experiences for both those that engage in community
service and those (nonprofits, community programs, etc.) that are
expected to accommodate people who are assigned community service.
I would like for people to have an experience that prompts them to
keep being involved in nonprofits as nonprofits.
Resources
Below are a mix of web pages and blogs about different aspects of
community service. Most are focused on court-ordred community
service, but some are also related to government requiring people
who receive government benefits to volunteer a certain number of
hours at nonprofits or related to students being required to do a
certain number of volunteering hours in order to receive a degree.
Regarding court-ordered community service:
- Why
your nonprofit should consider involving volunteers who have
been court-ordered to do community service and how
doing so can improve ALL of your volunteer engagement. Includes
suggestions for altering how you screen ALL volunteers and how
to adapt your volunteer application and policies.
- Advice
for those assigning or supervising court-ordered community
service, a resource is for judges, probation
officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other criminal
justice practitioners that are involved in assigning and
supervising court-ordered community service.
- Advice
for those doing required community service, whether
court ordered, ordered by the government because you receive a
certain benefit (unemployment, housing assistance, food
assistance, etc.) or because you must complete a certain number
of hours in order to graduate
- Assigning
law breakers to community service: worthwhile?: note
that this is not a blog about whether or not it affects
recidivism, but rather, if its worthwhile for nonprofits asked
to involve such volunteers., 2016 August 18
- Ethics in
Volunteerism & Court-Ordered Community Service
If your organization involves volunteers, you should also be
thinking regularly about the ethics of such. Involving people
who are not financially compensated for work that they do
carries with it regular questions and criticisms. Exploring
ethics in volunteerism has not won me many friends. Exploring
ethics in volunteerism can help you avoid public relations
disasters later.
- Supervising
online volunteers in court-ordered settings: how to
supervise online volunteers that are doing community service
because of a punishment or probation. 2015, September 09
- Schools
&
Courts:
you need to accept historical transcription online projects
as community service. 2020 July 20.
- Mandatory
community
service
can
be amazing for the “voluntolds”. April 2024
- Yes,
I
love court-ordered community service folks: how I
have involved people compelled by the courts to finish community
service. 2015 August 07
- r/communityservice,
an online community on Reddit that I moderate; I frequently post
news and resources by other people here, and sometimes my own. I
do not own this community: anyone can submit information to it.
As the volunteer moderator, I delete only that information that
is off-topic or violates the rules of the subredit. This a
terrific place to discuss mandatory community service.
Selling Community Service Hours:
- What
are
the consequences of allowing court-ordered volunteers to
make a donation instead of actually doing service?
My blog from July 2026, with a link to an article I did for the
Engage Journal exploring this issue in depth. I'm apparently the
first person to do research on this subject. If you work in the
courts system, whether a judge, a lawyer, a probation officer or
someone in law enforcement, I highly recommend you read this
blog and you read the article (there is a fee to read - if you
subscribe for just one month to Engage, it's a very
affordable amount).
- Want
a
list of all the companies selling community service hours? I
have it.. December 2025. This offer is ONLY for
officers of the court, and you will be required to request this
list from your government email address and use your real name.
- Consequences
for
faking community service, 2019 April 24
- Courts
getting
tougher re: online community service. 2017 January
12
- Proud
to
fool courts re: community service. a testimony from
someone that admits to benefiting from a company that sells
letters saying people have completed volunteering when they
actually haven’t., 2016 August 10
- Selling
community
service leads to arrest, conviction, update on how
Community Service Help has gone away, and the owner of the
notorious the Caffeine Awareness Association pled guilty to a
false-filing felony. 2016 July 01
- Haters
gonna
hate, November 2014 update on Community Service Help
and other similar, unethical companies. 2014 November 24
- Community
Service
Help Cons Another Person – a first-person account by
someone who paid for online community service and had it
rejected by the court. 2014 February 18
- Online
community
service company tries to seem legit, a November 2013
update about efforts these companies are making to seem
legitimate. 2013 March 26
- Update
on
a virtual volunteering scam. 2012 November 06
- Courts
being
fooled by online community service scams, an update
from November 2011 that is the most popular blog I’ve ever
published. 2011 November 09
- Online
volunteer
scam goes global, a July 2011 update with links
to TV stories trying to expose these scam companies.
- What
online
community service is – and is not – the
very first blog I wrote exposing a company selling
community service completion letters. It resulted in the founder
of the company calling me at home to beg me to take the blog
down and to mansplain to me what online volunteering is (he had
no idea who I was or my reputation regarding virtual
volunteering)., 2011 January 07
Commentary on Requiring People Receiving
Government Benefits to Volunteer:
These are mostly about how these are unfunded mandates that put
undue pressure on nonprofits and various government agencies to
spend resoruces to involve these volunteers.
Also see
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