Community Safety Minister visits Community Service programmes in Dumfries and Galloway

Beach cleaning is among several activities ongoing in the area. The aim is to punish low level offenders whilst steering them away from a life of crime. In addition to keeping the beach clean, the project supports literacy and numeracy skills with offenders by ensuring that they weigh and record the amount of rubbish removed from beaches.

Dumfries and Galloway Council's Community Service scheme has also benefited from the opening in Stranraer of the Blackparks Workshop earlier this year, which will enable users to benefit through development activities such as basic construction tasks and computer training.

Following a tour of the workshop, Mr Ewing visited Agnew Park Beach to see the beach cleaning project in action.

Minister for Community Safety Fergus Ewing said:

"Prison will always be the right place for serious and dangerous offenders but for low level offenders the statistics show us that short sentences do not work.

"Three-quarters of those given a prison sentence of six months or less go on to reoffend within two years of getting out. In comparison, three out of five offenders given tough community based sentences do not.

"We need to be smarter about the way in which we deal with low level offenders, because. the evidence shows that getting them out paying back the community through tough manual labour works far better than ineffective short prison sentences.

"Projects like these help reduce crime - by rehabilitating offenders and giving them new skills to help them get back into work these low level offenders can turn their backs on crime.

"The project to clean up Agnew Park Beach is a fantastic example of how community payback can help break the destructive cycle of reoffending by putting offenders to work to repay their dues to the community, whilst delivering benefits for local people."

Councillor John Dougan, Chair of Dumfries and Galloway Council's Social Work Services, and Vice Convenor of South West Scotland CJA said:

"New workshops for community service became a priority for the Council following a social work inspection in 2006. This has resulted in new premises in Dumfries and Stranraer, which will improve the delivery of Community Service and provide much better working conditions for both staff and those carrying out Community Service."