The victims of anti-social behaviour could choose how offenders are punished under plans being pitched by Labour.
The opposition has positioned itself as the party of law and order, with shadow justice secretary Steve Reed saying he will update Tony Blair's "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" slogan and put prevention at the heart of their approach.
The Times said freedom of information requests showed nearly two million reports of anti-social behaviour had gone unattended over the past three years, while community sentences halved over the last decade from 185,265 in 2011 to 72,021 in 2021.
Criminal justice consultancy Crest Advisory attributed the decline to magistrates losing confidence that the sentences would be completed, the paper added.
Mr Reed said increasing and strengthening the use of such sentences would tackle reoffending rates and give "a voice directly to victims."
He told The Times: "Victims will be able to select the unpaid work that offenders carry out, so victims will be seeing justice done."
Labour wants to widen the scope of community sentences work beyond tasks such as Clearing wasteland, decorating community centres, repairing churches and removing graffiti.
It also proposes victims sit on new community payback boards overseeing sentences and ensuring they are completed.
Mr Reed said he wants to update Mr Blair's 1990s slogan about being "tough on the causes of crime" by reviewing how to put prevention at the heart of the criminal justice system.
The review will look at how countries including New Zealand have adopted an approach of providing specialist treatment to prevent reoffending by those living with domestic violence or parents with serious mental health problems.
Mr Reed said: "Rather than just giving up on those people or letting them get out there and offend, I want to keep people safe and keep our community safe.
"You can do that by tackling the effects of the trauma that leads them to offending. By doing it, you make them much less likely to offend again.
"So if you really want to keep people safe, we've got to update Labour's old slogan: 'Tough on crime, tough on
the causes of crime' and make it fit for the future.
"This whole science around trauma in early years didn't exist in the early 1990s when Tony Blair came up with that phrase. So I want to update it for today." The party branded as "disgraceful" recent figures showing more than one million thefts went unsolved last year.
An analysis by Labour of crime statistics found that 1,145,254 cases of theft were dropped last year because the police failed to find a suspect.
It said that on average a domestic burglary costs victims £1,400, with the party warning that families were losing millions due to unsolved crimes.
Labour said that if it was in government, it would put 13,000 more police on the streets in a move funded by merging procurement for forces in England and Wales.