TWO hundred years ago, community justice was the stocks; visible justice was the gallows.

Society is unrecognisable now, but if you listened to some media commentators on Monday when I launched high-visibility vests for offenders on community service, you might have thought that is where we have returned.

These vests are luminous orange with “Community Payback” in big letters on them.

They have to be worn by any offender given unpaid work as part of their punishment (unless there are special reasons).

Community Payback vests are not there to shame or humiliate, but to demonstrate to offenders and the local community that crimes have consequences.

That has long been a principle of our justice system, but I think that now we need to make that clearer.

My guess is that if I took a straw poll of shoppers in town this Saturday, about four out of every five people I asked would agree that the justice system respected the rights of offenders. Fewer than one in three would say that it met the needs of victims, which would reflect the national picture.

Our justice system is fundamental to making society fair. It sets down and enforces the rules which we all live by. So over centuries, and rightly, we have developed a vigorous set of rules to ensure fair trials, and avoid what the philosopher Jeremy Bentham called “No greater injustice than that which condemns the innocent man”.

But the justice system is also a public service, and like any school or hospital is paid for by the taxpayer, and is there to protect the taxpayer, the community. Today we expect to know how our child’s school is performing, or the success rate of operations. We read a great deal about crime, but we may be less aware of the outcomes of most trials, or the punishment of many crimes, especially where that is in the community, not prison.

So yes, we want it to be fair to defendants and offenders, but we want it to work in the interests of the public and be seen to be working in the interests of the public.

And that is where the vests and Community Payback come in.

One lad I met on Monday had been convicted of dealing drugs. A pretty tough character. What he said to me was this; “to be honest, I thought I’d got off lightly when they gave me community service. But they might as well put a sign around your neck telling everyone what you’ve done. I don’t want to go through this again.”

He knows that Community Payback is not a soft option, and local people now know that too. There was nothing soft about the work I saw going on, it was tough, back-breaking stuff, and it was punishment with a purpose, giving something back to the community that has been wronged.

That lad I spoke to, he also said this to me: “Most people make a mistake once in a while, but this will make me more careful. Those people looking must wonder what I’ve done”.

I hope you will agree that if the prospect of wearing an orange fluorescent vest makes someone think twice before committing a crime, and that local people feel that the justice system is on their side, that can be no bad thing.