6/30    Whenever I watch celebrity news I hear so and so is guilty in the
        court and have to perform community service. They don't get fined or
        go to jail, but have to perform community service. What's so bad
        about serving your community? I mean, isn't it noble to serve food
        for the homeless, paint houses for the poor, and clean up highways
        trash? Imagine the United States drafting men between 18-25 to
        perform mandatory community service for just one year. We'd
        have a huge [free] labor force to clean up grafitti, recycle
        cans, and other wonderful things that make our community more
        beautiful. In our ever increasingly busy digital lives, we rarely
        have time to even help ourselves, let alone help others out. We
        are increasingly isolated from one another, and have very little
        understanding on this "sense of community" that our grandparents
        talked about. Perhaps incentives and rewards should be given to
        those that help our community, to make everyone's lives better.
        Community service is an honor performed by those who honor community
        and brotherhood. It is sad and ironic that criminals have the honor
        to serve our community. Just my two cents for today.   -2 cents guy
        \_ For reasons I won't elaborate on, I had to spend some time cleaning
           up trash with the other "community service" people in People's
           Park at one point.  There is actually a pretty huge pool of
           people who have "community service" hours to do at any given time.
           Several of the people there had 1000 hours of service they had to
           do.  I was, as far as I could tell, the only person there who was
           actually working.  Mostly people would just show up and loaf around
           all day, then get double that number of hours signed off for by
           the dude who runs the park.  If the dude who runs any given park
           doesn't want to be corrupt, people just migrate somewhere where
           it *is* corrupt.  Of all those community service hours that get
           handed out by judges, very little real service gets done (although
           I busted ass cleaning up the park).
        \_ This is a fairly old idea.  This was called a 'subbotnik' in
           USSR (only this was done on Saturdays, hence the name 'subbota =
           saturday'.)  You should ask someone who participated in a subbotnik
           what they think of it. -- ilyas
           \_ why didn't you participate in a subbotnik?
              \_ I was too young. -- ilyas
           \_ Switzerland requires you to serve the military or perform
              substitute service (community service). Maybe John can tell
              you all about it.
           \_ One might obtain a somewhat less grim view of such matters by
              looking at the Works Projects Administration established in the
              US during the great depression.  I believe modern Germany has a
              similar program where one may choose between military or
              `alternative' civilian service, but don't know much about it.
              Also, why constrain this sort of thing to men only?  That seems
              backwards and silly.  That said, if you're going to encourage
              community service, I don't think picking up trash and cleaning
              up graffiti are particularly inspiring tasks or the most useful
              application of that sort of workforce.  What made the WPA cool
              was that it took on really ambitious projects.  Even if you take
              all this into account, I don't know how much it's going to do
              for instilling a sense of community in people.  I know there's a
              geographic component to this: Many of my grandparents'
              present-day friends are people they grew up with on the same
              *block* in Brooklyn.  They joined the service together.  After
              the war they settled on Long Island together.  In their later
              years, part of the group moved to the same communities in
              Florida.  Of your friends today, how many lived on the same
              street you did when you were young?  Do you still keep in touch
              with your friends from high school?  Personally, I think my
              sense of community is as strong as my grandparents, just
              oriented along different axes (e.g. cultural vs. geographic).
              -dans
              \_ I think the CCC also did something similar in the same time
                 frame.
        \_ Why community service? Because we supposively live in a classless
           society. Billioniares pay the same amount for a moving violation
           as the average Joe. Community service forces the culprit to give
           up time, which means the rich don't get off easy and the poor
           aren't forced to pay fines. Both beat jail which puts the burden
           on society. All of this is separate from enforcing a draft
           (military or community works) or volunteerism. Much of the
           reasons behind why not lay with the relationship of citizens and
           government and society in general. And those discussions get ugly.
           \_ Where is the claim made that we live in a classless society?
              There have never been, and perhaps never will be a classless
              society. -- ilyas