According to a White Paper released last week, the Government is planning to reform the much-maligned ‘anti-social behaviour order’, or ASBO. Proposals include making it possible to obtain orders within hours at a lower standard of proof, and giving police the right to disperse groups of two or more people without prior notice. With the revelations surrounding the Leveson Inquiry still dominating the news, the government has been allowed to present the changes without great criticism. But these proposals are a massive step in the wrong direction, from a dire initial standpoint. Worse still, they exemplify a political elite out of touch with those growing up in urban Britain.
The underlying logic is stupid. Prevent a group of young people – the main perpetrators of ‘anti-social behaviour’ – from doing something in one place and they’ll do exactly the same things somewhere else, further from the reach of the police. In no way does it address the causes of the problem. An ASBO does not ask why people are behaving the way they are. It does not ask why people are standing on a street corner with nowhere to go. It does not ask why these people are not at home, or in school, or in work. If a child is not in school, banning them from a shopping centre will not make them go back into the classroom. All behaviour orders succeed in doing is further alienating those who already feel disenfranchised, abandoned by the political class, and harassed by police.
In the Netherlands, a lower drinking age for alcoholic drinks which are under 15% allows teenagers into pubs and bars. It gives them somewhere to be, a feeling of adult responsibility and a mature attitude to alcohol. We provide ASBOs instead. The point of ASBOs was never to confront gang crime, youth unemployment, poor education, or the removal of anywhere for young people to go. All they were meant to do was sweep the armies of yobs far far away and keep them from intimidating honest, upstanding voters.
Behaviour orders are the result of the middle classes legislating for the middle classes. They demonstrate the gulf between those growing up in our inner cities and those, sometimes not so far away, who are dictating their future. Politicians simply do not relate to the young people who are the main subjects of behaviour orders, for whom they are not ‘badges of honour’ but an unwelcome restriction on their civil liberties. Clearly we don’t need more criminalisation: we need politicians brave enough to face up to the real issues that are the causes of ‘anti-social behaviour’. Proposals like these are just sad evidence that such people are hard to come by.
