Tackling anti-social behaviour

Government Response: The Home Office

"The home affairs select committee inquiry into anti-social behaviour said recently that the 'overall the balance of the government's strategy is about right.

"The anti-social behaviour act gives agencies the powers they need to protect communities from the corrosive effect of harassment and intimidation, and there's been a huge nationwide public response.

"It's important to bear in mind ASBOs are in fact preventative orders, requiring individuals to refrain from anti-social behaviour - they are not criminal penalties and are designed to keep people out of the criminal justice system where possible.

"As well as the use of ASBOs, the Act includes a whole new range of tools that are available, many of which the public are not aware of, aimed at improving and modify behaviour. These include staged warnings, acceptable behaviour agreements, fixed penalty notices and various parenting interventions.

"Individual Support Orders, which can be attached to ASBOs for 10-17 year olds, are a positive means of addressing the underlying causes of unacceptable and damaging community behaviour.

"The Anti-Social Behaviour Unit announced in February 2005 £1.2m of funding for parenting programmes, to give parents extra support including residential support."

Opposition Response: The Conservatives

Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "If the government really wanted to attack the causes of anti-social behaviour they should start with drink and drugs, poor discipline in schools and a million truancies a year.

"They would need to get these policies right if they were serious about sorting the problems out."

The government should consider shifting the emphasis of its campaign against anti-social behaviour (ASB) to show it can tackle the underlying causes, as well as taking a hard line with perpetrators.

Research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reveals that 66 per cent of adults believe preventive action offers the most effective way to tackle rowdy, intimidating behaviour, vandalism and other anti-social behaviour.

Only 20 per cent interviewed in a specially-commissioned national survey regarded tough action against young people and others accused of ‘ASB’ as the best way forward, while another 11 per cent called for a combination of prevention and enforcement.

The new study, by researchers at King’s College London, suggests that even in neighbourhoods experiencing serious anti-social behaviour, residents offer conflicting explanations for the problems.

Focus groups in some of the worst-affected areas found that while older residents tended to view ASB as a symptom of declining moral standards, others blamed it on social deprivation and the disengagement of a growing minority of young people and families.

A third group took a ‘kids will be kids’ view, seeing ASB as a consequence of young people’s tendency to rebel, get into trouble and antagonise their elders.

Professor Mike Hough, director of the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at King’s College and co-author of the study, said: "The government’s TOGETHER campaign against anti-social behaviour appeals to the ‘law-abiding majority’ to take a stand, portraying a struggle between ordinary, decent people and a tide of loutishness.

"The reality, suggested by our research, is more complicated. It suggests that the public want policy makers to balance tough enforcement through ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) with strong, high-profile action to prevent problems and offer young people constructive alternatives to hanging around on the streets."

The research combined a national sample survey of adults over 16, conducted by the Office for National Statistics, with focus groups in three case study neighbourhoods. In-depth interviews also took place with representatives from communities and agencies, including the police, local ASB Co-ordinators, and housing officers. The study found that: 

• Anti-social behaviour is an acute concern for a significant minority of the population, but has little or no impact on the majority. One in five respondents to the national survey said rowdy teenagers had a ‘fairly big’ or ‘big’ impact on their lives.
  
  
• Anti-social behaviour by young people appeared to cause the most concern and be most visible, although a higher proportion of the population were exposed to other types of problem such as vandalism, litter and rubbish.
  
  
• In the case-study neighbourhoods, people were most concerned by misbehaviour by children and young people, visible drug and alcohol misuse, neighbour disputes and ‘problem’ families. Some residents feared retaliation if they intervened and many felt powerless to overcome the problems in their area. Statutory agencies were considered impotent to deal with serious misbehaviour.
  
  
• The different views that professionals and residents took of the causes of anti-social behaviour implied different solutions. Those who blamed declining moral standards tended to favour tougher discipline and penalties. Those who attributed it to deprivation were more likely to call for preventive measures such as intensive youth work and constructive activity schemes.
  
  
•  Local strategies for combating anti-social behaviour in the three neighbourhoods had all included preventive work as well as enforcement in their response. The researchers argue that this balanced approach – where anti-social behaviour orders were only sought after less draconian responses had failed – should be more widely acknowledged and promoted.

Professor Hough said: "There is a sharp contrast between the push to prioritise enforcement at national level and the commitment among local agencies to preventive options. The practitioners we spoke to thought that enforcement tactics could provide a short-term answer to anti-social behaviour, but that longer-term prevention required social inclusion measures to re-connect a disengaged minority of young people with the rest of society."