A MAN who completed five hours of a 120-hour community service order imposed for violent offences has been jailed for 24 weeks.
Diogo Sousa Nascimento (35) had been given the community punishment for three assaults, as a direct alternative to a jail sentence.
But the Magistrate’s Court was told yesterday(MON) that he had done very little of it, so Assistant Magistrate Peter Harris revoked the community service order and replaced it with a custodial sentence.
Nascimento had committed common assaults on 2 June 2017 and 24 September 2018, and a grave and criminal assault on 31 January 2019. He was sentenced in July this year.
But the court heard that during September he only carried out community service on one of the three Sundays he was required to. Advocate Sophie Lister, prosecuting, said: ‘Of the 120 hours he has done five.’
Advocate Heidi Heath, defending, said Nascimento had missed work on 11 September because he had thought he was due to attend the following week. He missed a second date, she said, because he had overslept and arrived 20 minutes late, by which time everyone else had left. She added that he had completed a previous community service order from two years earlier satisfactorily, and invited the court to view the omissions as ‘teething problems’.
However, Mr Harris told Nascimento: ‘The message has to be made clear that you are only granted community service when the court thinks it will be completed. You were given a chance and you have not taken that chance.’
He sentenced him to four weeks’ imprisonment for each of the common assaults and 16 weeks for the grave and criminal assault, all to run consecutively.
