NTU: Are more anti-social behaviour powers really neces

Are more anti-social behaviour powers really necessary?

Last week saw the Queen's Speech setting out the forthcoming legislative programme of the coalition government. In it was a commitment to bring forward legislation to 'tackle anti-social behaviour, cut crime and further reform the police'.

The result is a bill entitled the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill. It is the latest incarnation of legislation first introduced under Labour in 1998 through the Crime and Disorder Act, when Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) came into being.

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) is a difficult and contentious issue that requires us to think beyond simply what powers - both civil and legal - are needed to tackle some of the problems that exist in local communities. The new Bill's explanatory note defines ASB as 'the everyday nuisance, disorder and crime that has a huge impact on victims' quality of life' and states that in the ‘year ending December 2012, over 2.3 million incidents of anti-social behaviour were recorded by the police in England and Wales, equivalent to around 6,300 incidents every day'. The immediate problem with this is that reported incidents cover a very wide spectrum of activity and are often counted in different ways.

As one analysis of the British Crime Survey data (2004/2005) on ASB noted:

"Measuring anti-social behaviour …has its problems. Its subjective and context-specific nature means that counting 'incidents' is difficult, unlike for crime where clear legal definitions are available. In addition, particular types of behaviour may have an effect on many people, for example several people may see a single incident of graffiti or vandalism, and an incident may be reported by several individuals, or to several different agencies, causing problems with double counting of incidents."

The most widely perceived individual problem in this survey was 'young people hanging around' with 31% of respondents regarding it as a 'very' or 'fairly big' problem. Methodologically, the approach to assessing such attitudes may be open to question, since 'young people hanging around on the streets' was offered as an option, and attitudinal scales will undoubtedly lay themselves open to criticism for what constitutes a 'fairly big problem'.

Reading on: of those participants who had 'seen young people hanging around' in the past 12 months, the top three concerns were 'swearing/using bad language', being a 'general nuisance' and 'being loud, rowdy or noisy'. These acts are not criminal, nor are they exclusive to young people. In a sense they represent a moral distaste for certain activities - swearing the case in point - which may indeed be construed as anti-social.

Examples of ASB cited by the Home Office range from 'nuisance neighbours', 'people dealing and buying drugs on the street', 'people dumping rubbish and abandoning cars' through to 'yobbish behaviour and intimidating groups taking over public spaces'. ASBOs have been used for a wide range of behaviours including spitting, associating with friends and family, travelling on buses in a specific area, going into shops, committing suicide, being sarcastic, being on the street, political protesting, and visiting family members.

Much of what is classified as ASB is clearly criminal and I remain unconvinced that new or even revised ASB laws are needed to tackle what are essentially already illegal acts. However, the wide range of behaviours that might be described as a 'general nuisance' require us to think carefully and creatively about possible solutions.

There is no doubt that residents can feel high levels of fear about things they perceive to be threatening. Survey after survey shows that fear of crime outweighs crime itself. In one community I worked in, residents expressed constant fear about groups of young people hanging around the end of the street. Calls to the police resulted in the young people being moved on which lead to a temporary reprieve as their fear was displaced. Yet, in reality the young people are simply moved to another location, probably resulting in creating tensions elsewhere and doing nothing to build the relationships between the two opposing groups.

More creative solutions have been adopted. The use of restorative justice circles by the police in one neighbourhood was an enlightening process. Here, the police first brought together tenants to express their concerns and work towards solutions. Then, they met separately with young people to do the same. Finally, they brought both groups together to enable a dialogue to happen for probably the first time. Expert facilitation was key to the success of the group where each participant was given the opportunity to speak - without interruption - and to be heard. At the end of the process, both groups understood the impact of their behaviour on the other and identified different ways to live together in their neighbourhood.

Clearly such an approach is more time consuming and challenging than merely enabling residents to access civil powers to report problem behaviour. Yet if we are convinced that the resolutions to ASB are in the communities themselves, we need to work harder to support stronger relationships between different groups in neighbourhoods.

In a climate of diminishing police resources and increased socio-economic hardship, people working together to tackle problems in a collaborative way will be all the more important.

Dr Jason Pandya-Wood
Head of Sociology
Nottingham Trent University