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Published:
Mar 18, 2026DOI:
10.4314/mlr.v20i1.1Keywords:
Article Details
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Main Article Content
Ethiopia’s Legal Framework for Court-ordered Non-custodial Community Service
Belayneh Berhanu Nega
Abstract
This article examines the normative framework for court-ordered non-custodial community service in the Ethiopian criminal justice system. Community service order applies to minor offences and requires offenders to perform certain work and services rather than imprisonment. The scheme is addressed under two provisions of the 2004 Criminal Code, and many issues are not addressed. The themes that are not addressed include the issue of matching the skill of offenders and available work, the constituents of failure to discharge community service order, the effect of committing a crime during the period of community service order, the maximum and minimum working hours per day, and more importantly, the institutional setups. Based on doctrinal and analytical legal research, this author argues that fixing the duration of community service in days/months can pose difficulty for enforcement. Furthermore, perfect equivalence between the length of imprisonment and the duration of community service does not seem practicable and logical. Automatic revocation and/or imposition of imprisonment in case of failure to discharge the order would not be a tenable response, and other preliminary measures, such as warning and imposition of a fine without revoking the order, are appropriate. Hence, the scheme requires normative reconsiderations for implementation and its effectiveness as an alternative to imprisonment.
