Community service as punishment creates ungrateful, unhelpful character

Community service is often seen as a fit punishment for many broken rules and laws. From cleaning trash off the side of the road to serving meals at the local homeless shelter, the mindset that helping the community will be good for wrongdoers is being used by schools and the justice system. However, this method of punishment will only prepare a person to dislike community service and be less likely to help their fellow man in the future.  

It is common knowledge that we do not continue to do things we find unpleasant. When people are given community service as a punishment, they often find they don’t like it because they relate it to their punishment and previous wrongdoing. This is a society that can’t afford to have people who don’t want to help their neighbors. In 2016, it was estimated that there were 554,000 homeless people in America and that number has only been increasing. The homeless population in Colorado rose nearly 4 percent last year and there are 23 percent more homeless people in Los Angeles than there were last year. These people would be immensely benefitted by people who genuinely want to help them through community services, not by people forced to who never return.  

Community service should be something that all people do at some point in their lives and something that they continue to do in order to serve their fellow man. Using such an amiable thing as punishment is counteractive; it won’t end up making anyone a better person in the long-run. Though it seems the opposite would be true, punishment by community service only leaves us with a world which values it less.