Community Payback Orders
Information about the requirements of a Community Payback Order.
If you commit an offence, a Community Payback Order (CPO) is an alternative to custody designed to ensure that you payback to society.
You'll have to carry out unpaid work as well as address and change your behaviour to improve the safety of the local community.
You'll be supported to resettle into the community as a law abiding citizen.
If you're sentenced to a CPO, your order will include at least 1 requirement.
CPO requirements
The court will select requirements to impose in the CPO. For example, unpaid work, offender supervision or drug treatment.
When will a CPO be made?
A CPO can be issued as an alternative to a prison sentence.
A court can also issue a CPO with a range of requirements instead of (or as well as) a fine.
Courts can now issue a CPO, including an unpaid work or other activity requirement of up to 100 hours.
For other offences, unpaid work or other activity requirements can be issued between 20 and 300 hours.
If you're sentenced to unpaid work and other activity within a CPO, there's strict timescales to complete this requirement, unless the court states otherwise.
Supervision requirements
If you're younger than 18 when you're sentenced to a CPO, the court will include an offender supervision requirement. It'll also include a supervision requirement if any other requirement is issued on a person.
Reviews at court
The court may schedule review hearings to check on your progress during a CPO.
In circumstances where you make highly positive progress during a CPO, the court may decide to discharge the order early.
If you breach a CPO, the court can vary the order and issue new or different requirements.
The court can decide to issue a restricted movement requirement (electronic monitoring or 'tag') or it can decide to cancel the order and sentence you to a period in custody or any other sentence that it could have used in the first instance.
