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Community service, pays back the community, hopefully break-even cost in terms of administration and enforcement to labor productivity gained, at least won't be as bad as a prison sentence. At best can be a form of rehabilitation.

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And when you don't do your community service because there's no consequences (because jails are already full and because you can't squeeze water from a stone), what happens?

You also have to pay someone to constantly supervise them which is just as expensive as just paying someone to do the job.

Community service, pays back the community,

Probably just a gimmick. Court costs and overhead time checking the crooks doing mandatory good deeds might be more. But then we have to punish them somewhow

I'm not sure if this has been tried before, but how about a time consuming (multiple choice) test for deterring crimes where an offender, in order to cut prison time, has to study hard and be mentally in involved with like 1000 questions for a few hours. Fail the test? You're given a week to study and take the test again. The type of test that is so annoying that once you pass you don't want to take it again.

So, you're saying that to avoid jail, all the offender has to do is sit in a room for a few hours every week?

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