Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke saw a team of Community Payback offenders brightening up an underpass blighted by graffiti today.

The offenders from Ipswich whitewashed and painted over the graffiti in a town centre underpass, preparing it for a community mural to be painted by a local artist. 

The artwork, called 'The Never Ending Mural,' will see the face of Ipswich transformed for the better and improve the environment for the local community. The project is being run by Norfolk and Suffolk Probation Trust in partnership with Ipswich Borough Council.

Speaking to probation staff and offenders working on the scheme, Kenneth Clarke said:

'As part of our plans to restore public confidence in community sentences we will be making Community Payback more intensive and demanding with unemployed offenders serving longer hours, carrying out purposeful, unpaid activity such as this, which benefits their local community.'
 
About 100,000 individuals are sentenced to Community Payback each year across England and Wales with over 8.8 million hours of unpaid work completed last year.

The public can nominate jobs for offenders via the Directgov website.

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