Will community service hurt Silvio Berlusconi's image more than prison?
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Version 0 of 1. "Being a copper I like to see the law win," says Captain Gregory in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. "I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper and never had a break since. That's what I'd like." The captain should have been there on Friday when Silvio Berlusconi rolled up at a care home outside Milan to serve the first of a year's worth of community service sessions. This is his punishment for tax fraud, commuted from four years' imprisonment because of his age. He will be working with elderly patients, among whom a classic test for judging confusion is to ask who the prime minister is. Unless the doctor is well briefed, answering "The last time I took an interest, it was that guy mopping the floor" could lead to misdiagnosis. In Britain we still like to send our politicians to prison. Five MPs and two peers were banged up in the wake of the expenses scandal, and Chris Huhne has been jailed since. If our politicians do perform community service it is because they have sentenced themselves to it. In the early days of David Cameron's leadership Conservatives attending the party conference were encouraged to take part in "social action". Bemused teenagers would watch as formidable women turned up to repaint their youth club – one of those women may be the very minister who subsequently cut funding to the council and forced the club to close. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown, with a characteristic combination of nobility and strangeness, announced that he would be spending part of his summer holiday working on a community project in Kirkcaldy. All that looks old-fashioned now. Berlusconi was a pioneer in turning politics into another branch of showbusiness, and it is in this world that community service has become the authorities' punishment of choice. Perhaps they think the public humiliation of an idol will have more effect on young fans. So the striker Joey Barton was converted into a sweeper after assaulting a team mate at training and spotted clearing rubbish at the Newcastle Falcons ground. (A rugby ground? That must have hurt.) And Naomi Campbell and Boy George were seen in similar circumstances in New York. But does it work? Serving 120 hours for assaulting a lavatory attendant in 2003 did nothing to slow the metamorphosis of Cheryl Tweedy of Girls Aloud into Cheryl Cole, solo star and, for a short while, the nation's sweetheart. Some celebs even use community service to boost their image. In 2008 the rapper Snoop Dogg received an eye-watering 800 hours for drug and gun offences, but was allowed to spend half of them working on his own Snoop youth gridiron football league. If the authorities had heard this involved a "Snooper Bowl" championship game, he would have been prosecuted under the Ego Act and sent to the rock quarry at Folsom. Though the authorities did not appreciate his vision at the time, it is the Leicester singer Mark Morrison who may have seen the future of celebrity community service. In 1995 he was given 150 hours for his part in a nightclub brawl in which a student died. In those days Morrison was a big name, and big names have a posse. Along with the vocal coaches, choreographers, cooks, dieticians, personal trainers, friends, relations, homies and hangers-on, he must have reasoned: why not have someone to do your community service for you? Didn't medieval princes have whipping boys to be punished in their stead? And so whoever turned up for work at a homeless hostel in London, it wasn't Mark Morrison. When this came to light and he was called back to court, Morrison arrived wearing an "Only God Can Judge Me" T-shirt. He turned out to be misinformed: he got 12 months in prison. |