COMMUNITIES in West Devon are being offered the chance to suggest projects which offenders sentenced to unpaid work can do to give something positive back to their neighbourhoods.

The local Probation Service is working with South Devon and Dartmoor Community Safety Partnership as part of a campaign called Project Payback.

Suggested projects must involve offender contact with those who will benefit from the project; be useful, and offer opportunities for offenders to develop empathy and understanding; offer chances for offenders to practice and reinforce problem solving, and gain employment skills.

Mike is a 42-year former lieutenant with the Royal Engineers. He's now a shop manager.

His job requires long hours, he has just one day a week off. It is a day he would like to share with his partner or four children, a wish he cannot fulfil however, as last year he pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid work.

He had taken £200 from a pot intended to benefit youngsters who attended the youth group where he was a volunteer.

He is currently with the Growing for Life scheme, a plant nursery linked to the Eden Project and which offers horticultural therapy to vulnerable people in South Devon.

Mike is helping to build a log cabin destined to become a training centre.

He said: 'It's an excellent scheme. I'm not a gardener, but you see the log cabin coming along, see the habitat changing — whatever you're doing you know you're making a difference.'

Mike has had plenty of time to think about the circumstances which landed him the payback order.

'I know what I did was silly, but l'd got into the position where I was in a rut and thought the only way out is I can borrow this and in a couple of weeks I can sort it out.'

Mike's 'bit of a rut' was a messy divorce and a business which went bust.

'I was as low as you can get, personally, physically morally,' he said.

'I did what I had to do to cover my expenses, stupid and wrong, and now I'm paying for it.

'Not just for the past six months and the six months to come, but for a long time, it's always going to be on my record whenever I have to apply for another job.

'All the respect I built up in different jobs in the past, all that has gone because of one stupid moment.'

He said community payback was not the easy option some might think.

'It's gutting, to know I've got to be here, every day I'm off work, in all weathers,' he said.

'The time I should be spending with my partner I've lost, we've lost, we'll never get that back. It's affected the whole of my life and will continue to do so.'

Mike believes that while jail robs offenders of their liberty, a punishment that is appropriate in some cases, in others it delivers society nothing but a large and potentially recurring bill.

'I would probably have lost my partner and would certainly have lost my job, probably have had nowhere to live and no way to finance my car, I would have lost everything,' he said.

'The state would have had to find me somewhere to live, would have had to fund me, the state would be paying for me twice.

'If I was a younger man the easy option would be to re-offend. That's all you would know and all you're going to do.'

And when Mike's payback time is over, what next?

'I shall miss the place actually and I think I'll still keep coming up once in a while.

'It will be good to look around at things and think yeah, I did that, I did something to help.'

Community groups who think they have projects suitable for the Payback scheme should go to http://www.teignbridge.gov.uk/projectpayback">www.teignbridge.gov.uk/projectpayback for more information.