This paints a profile of a predominantly low-income population - 89 percent of those serving community service in the cohort they studied were low-income - of color, with substantial numbers of immigrants.ДЄround 100,000 people are sentenced to community service in LA County every year, serving the equivalent of 4,900 full-time, paid civilian jobs and 1,800 government jobs.

They also found a high percentage of people who could not afford attorneys (78 percent) amongst those who performed community service, while 16 percent had limited English proficiency and needed translators in court. For example, in traffic cases that resulted in community service, which involve infractions like speeding and failing to stop, 81 percent of workers were Latinx, out of proportion with LAвЂ™s roughly 49 percent Latinx population, and 8 percent were Black. The researchers found significant racial disparities, with Latinx and Black people being more likely to serve community service as a result of disparities in citations, arrests, and charging decisions. As with other elements of the criminal legal system, class and race heavily mediate the kind of service people engage in and how many hours they are ordered to complete. Limited research on this subject is in circulation, but the information from Los Angeles suggests tracking and quantifying data around community service nationwide might yield important insights into a little-researched aspect of the legal system. So has a University of California, Los Angeles study that took a close look at how community service is used in LA County, and the wildly disparate outcomes within the countyвЂ™s court-ordered community service framework. Several recent high-profile cases have put court-ordered community service like that Lopez experienced into the headlines. вЂњI couldnвЂ™t afford to enroll at a volunteer center and do my hours.вЂќ Her struggle to fulfill the terms led her down a rabbit hole of unsympathetic judges, sexual harassment, and dangerous working conditions. вЂњI was homeless, looking for a place to live, and trying to get into a drug treatment program,вЂќ Gomez told TalkPoverty. From the start, she felt unsupported by the system. Selena Lopez, 24, had several interactions with the criminal legal system before she was sentenced to a brief jail stint for burglary and offered community service as an option.

Acs no court order knocking at my door