ASSAULT, affray and drink-driving, three different crimes which led to one sentence – Community Payback.

Our crime reporter worked alongside and talked to offenders as they carried out unpaid work in East Lancashire.

Around 1,000 offenders in East Lancashire are given unpaid work as part of their sentence every year.

Make that 1,000 offenders and one journalist – at least for a few hours – as I grab a spade, rake and a wheelbarrow and join the team.

It is far from a prison chain gang, bound together at the ankle smashing boulders. But it’s manual labour for an office boy used to crafting words, not walkways.

Increasingly, low-level crime is punished with community service, the aim being to try and keep offenders out of the vicious cycle of the prison system and to give something back to the community they have harmed.

Community payback is where sentences are turned into good old-fashioned graft.

It is far from a new idea, but since the introduction of garish vests, signage and publicity of the schemes were agreed in December 2008, high-visibility projects appear to be on the increase.

I joined project supervisor Paul Roberts and three grim-faced community sentence recipients on a chilly morning at Witton Park, Blackburn, where our morning duties are to open out a pathway for use by disabled trampers.

The work is part of an ongoing regeneration of the popular East Lancashire beauty spot, with the council making the most of cheap labour and end-less hours of manpower.

All three are some way through their orders, so the only thing unusual about today’s slog is the presence of an eager reporter voluntarily picking up a spade.

Teams are usually made up of six people, so our workforce is already depleted. Paul tells me this is unusual, and that three quarters of the thousands of offenders he has overseen in his 13-year career successfully complete their hours.

He will later be required to fill in admin for those that fail to show, which feeds back to the Probation Service and eventually a judge. Those that do not turn up get one warning before being hauled back to court to explain themselves and face further punishment for a breach offence.

Paul said: “You win some, you lose some, but in my experience with the Probation Service it has positive results.”

This is no ‘soft option’ he assures me. “A project such as this is really positive for the offenders and for the public.,” he said. “And in 30 or 40 years, it will be these guys coming back to the park with their children showing them their work.

“Learning a skill or a trade can help them get the work which keeps them out of crime. It’s about getting them out of the pattern of off-ending.”

Therein lies the thrust of today’s exercise.

So I speak to ‘Robert’, ‘Anne’ and ‘Harry’, who are all in their twenties and from the Accrington, Oswaldtwistle and Blackburn areas to see if all this public toiling in the fresh air can really change their attitude to crime.

Maybe it’s the camaraderie of a shared goal, but this part-icular group strikes me as a collection of ordinary people who have made bad decisions rather than seasoned low-level criminals.

Once mother-of-three ‘Anne’ recognises I am actually putting my back into the digging, she speaks candidly about her exp-erience of community payback.

She is one of the few women to be on the project and has struggled with the handful of ‘idiots’ she’s come across in the 120 hours she’s clocked up over the last few months.

Her conviction for assault came on the back of a very personal and emotive dispute.

She said: “If it wasn’t for my kids, I’d have preferred to go to prison rather than do this.

“It’s annoying, hard and an inconvenience. There’s a lot of banter being a girl because you do get some idiots.”

But she later confides that she is also re-taking GCSEs alongside her community sentence – something she admits she ‘would nev-er have done’ if not involved with probation. Anne left school at 15 and has three kids of school age, who do not know about the community sentence.

Robert is a twice convicted drink-driver, having been caught over the limit the morning after a few drinks.

Although currently unemployed and restricted by a four-year driving ban, he is attempting to get into the security industry and seems upbeat and positive.

He accepts his mistakes and his 100 hours punishment, plus a drink-drive course, as well as grasping the idea of putting something back into the community more than the others, taking pride in his work.

Paul said Robert was a good example of those he ‘never has any trouble with’.

“In some ways I’m glad I haven’t got a job at the moment, because I’d hate to have to do this at weekends after a full week’s work,” he said.

“But there’s no way I’d rather be in prison for seven days.”

The third of my co-workers for the morning is quietly spoken Harry, who played a small part in a bigger disturbance and was convicted of affray. He seems very wary of my presence, but does tell me he is close to completing his 270 hours.

The public’s confidence in the criminal justice system is all about perception and today’s activities are as much about showing people that there are visible consequences to breaking the law.

One elderly disabled park user goes past our busy group, mak-ing the most of the morning’s pathway improvements.

She pauses long enough to tell me that as long as there is ‘discipline’ and ‘they do a good job’ then it’s a fair punishment to ‘keep them out of mischief’.

l To nominate a local community project for East Lancashire’s offenders, go to the website below.