How will these resources help you?

In the UK more people receive community sentences (often described by exam specifications as ‘non-custodial sentences’) than prison sentences. They are also set to be used more in the future as increasing amounts of evidence show that short custodial sentences have very high reoffending rates. But are they a better alternative to custodial sentences, or do they raise their own sets of problems for offenders and society? I use extracts from these texts with higher pupils (in Scotland) to introduce the need for more discussion about how we treat those offenders who we choose not to send to prison.