Anti-social!
media

The Labour Government is pursuing the use of anti-social behaviour powers with a frightening zeal. And in turn, local authorities are using these new powers to purge the streets and communities of people considered by those in authority as 'undesirable.'

In turn, a variety of important rights are being eroded, including housing rights, those of freedom of movement and the right to fair trial. Yet these developments are proceeding unchecked and with little comment or criticism. This section of the website will monitor the development of these powers, highlight the abuses to which they are being put, and explore some of the consequences.

The Antisocial! Media Section will collate examples of use of ASBOs from the media and, where possible, critically consider them.

If you are aware of examples of the misuse of these powers that should be highlighted, please contact KFx and we will include the details in this section.

Lawzone: 12.10.04
Housing Today: 12.10.04

PA News

8.10.04

Manchester on line

6.10.04

Canadian article which casts a critical eye over the UK love of ASBOs and concludes that it is bad law making

American's are looking at our ASBOs and condemning them and and celebrating the fact that the American Constitution would make them unworkable. Surely this would give Blunkett food for thought.

Antisocial behaviour orders are just what young people aspire too; they need positive role models - argues a former yob

Children bear brunt of antisocial behaviour measures

Piece in the Guardian about how proud Manchester is of it's ASBO plan and how little time they have for woolly liberals who may object

Asbos work - lets have more of the same

The case of John Cash who is banned from knocking on any door in britain or phoning.

Probably one of the most serious infringments of civil liberty yet incorporated into an ASBO.

Drunken Neighbours slapped with ASBO

CNN 3.8.04

Nick Cohen turns his attention to ASBOs and highlights the case of an 87 year old who is no longer allowed to swear or be sarcastic.

He goes on to explore why, although crime is falling - fear of antisocial behaviour is so essential to New Labour

Q+A - Antisocial Behaviour Trailblazer

Presumably the Antisocial Behaviour Unit and the Local Authority view this as a 'successful outcome.'

'The law is a blunt instrument'

Round up of editorial comment from the UK media on the roll-out of ASBOs in the UK. Includes some words of wisdom from the Sun calling for more jails and work camps.

Estate where orders don't always work

Report from the use of ASBOs in Wythenshawe, and the limited impact that it is having on local people.

Blair pledges to extend antisocial behaviour measures

Parents cry foul as 'anti-social' teenagers are named and shamed

Families angry as council takes on young 'dealers'

Nuisance neighbours, beggars, and graffiti taggers targeted in action plan

Curfew plan faces court challenge

Begging protester dies

18.11.03
The Guardian

Beggars belief

Locking beggars up is not the answer. People need help and support to move away from this soul destroying activity, says Fay Selvan

The Big Issue in the North does not look at the prosecution of beggars from a law enforcement angle. Penalising people is not the answer, for them or society at large.

Rough justice

The government intends to punish persistent beggars, if necessary with prison terms. But is that the best way of getting them off the streets?

Beg to differ

Government moves to forcibly stop begging have created an outcry but many charities support such action, says Jeremy Swain

Article in which Swain makes the case for the use of coercion and punishment to get people to change.

Poster paints grim picture of beggars

Antisocial Behaviour Order man found Dead

Antisocial great-grandad escapes jail

Thursday October 21, 2004

An 88-year-old great-grandfather has escaped being jailed for breaching his antisocial behaviour order (Asbo) because of his age.

Alexander Muat, believed to be the oldest man in Britain to receive an Asbo, was today found guilty at Liverpool crown court of three breaches of his order. The jury cleared him of a further three breaches and one charge of putting a person in fear.

But judge David Lynch said: "There will be no prison for an 88-year-old man."

Mr Muat, a retired RAF engineer, from Huyton, Merseyside, was accused of repeatedly harassing his neighbours, Alison and Derek Fowler.

He denied all the allegations and claimed he was the real victim of harassment.

In July last year Mr Muat, who is profoundly deaf, became the oldest man in the country to receive an Asbo.

The order banned him from making excessive noise by banging doors and bin lids, filming his neighbours, swearing and shouting at them and driving his car into other people's driveways.

The case was adjourned today for sentencing on November 13

Last orders

Mary O'Hara reports on how the case of a woman with a serious drink problem is raising questions about the government's key weapon in the war against antisocial behaviour

Wednesday October 20, 2004
The Guardian

It's a sunny October afternoon, and a group of regulars in the Millers Arms pub in Lincoln are engaged in an animated discussion about whether Gina Mallard should be jailed for breaching an antisocial behaviour order (Asbo). Mallard, a colourful, loud-mouthed 41-year-old mother of two, is notorious in the high street area for her outrageous drunken behaviour. And, until recently, no one seemed to know what to do about her.

Everyone, it seems, has at least one outlandish yarn to relay. Mallard's exploits have become the stuff of folklore. Tales are told of how she is regularly spotted staggering drunk down the street, beer can in hand, swearing at passersby. Shopkeepers roll their eyes as they recall her prancing about in her underwear in public, or with her knickers on over her jeans.

Others mention the time Mallard lobbed a brick through an off licence window after staff refused to serve her. The owner of the local newsagent lets loose a resigned chuckle. Grown men, she says, have been known to run into her shop to hide in fear of Mallard making a pass at them. "She's a big, strong woman, and forceful when she's drunk," another shopowner says. "She might not actually hit you, but there's always a worry that one day she will thump someone. I've seen her smashing up a phone box for no reason."

The landlady of the Millers Arms talks of the last time she had to call the police to "sort Gina out". She had been "off her face", bothering punters and finishing their drinks when they weren't looking. The police eventually arrested her. "Jail wouldn't be enough for her," declares one man in the pub as he peers over a pint of bitter. "She's frightening and she scares the kids at the school across the road," says another drinker.

"I feel sorry for her," a young woman standing by the bar says with a stern shake of her head. "She has problems. Yes, she gets drunk and shouts and is a nuisance. But shouldn't she be getting help for her drinking problems instead of being thrown into prison? What good will that do? She'll only be let out and start doing it all over again."

The "Mallard question", it is fair to say, has divided the community. Some local people regard her merely as an irritant or public nuisance. Others believe she is an aggressive, violent terror whose antics make their lives a misery. Mallard's stepfather, Malcolm Pell, with whom she shares a house just off the high street, attempted to explain her behaviour in the local paper: "When she drinks, her anger and depression seem to come out."

Mallard was issued with an Asbo in July last year following dozens of court appearances for petty crime, including criminal damage and being drunk and disorderly. The conditions of the Asbo stipulate that she cannot drink or be drunk in a public place for two years.

But Mallard has breached the Asbo seven times. As a result, when she appears at Lincoln crown court for sentencing next Monday she could face five years in jail - the maximum penalty for a breach. She has been on remand for 14 weeks.

Earlier this month, the Lincolnshire Echo ran a front page article questioning the logic of jailing Mallard for breaching the Asbo (to date, most local press coverage around the country has been in favour of Asbos). The article provoked a deluge of letters to the editor, some protesting at the harshness of Mallard's treatment, others - including a nurse who treated her at Lincoln county hospital - saying she deserves all she gets. "On several occasions she completely destroyed her room, throwing a television across the room and requiring hospital security to calm the situation," wrote the nurse. Lincolnshire police says it applied for the Asbo to help its officers protect the local community from what it describes as Mallard's "horrendous" behaviour. "She is not a loveable rogue, people are quite frightened and intimidated by her," says a police spokesman.

With her persistent disruptive behaviour, and its obvious detrimental effect on the local community, Mallard is, in theory, exactly the sort of person the government had in mind when it introduced Asbos five years ago. The government defines grounds for Asbos as: "a manner that caused, or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household".

Asbos were introduced to act as a deterrent and to help rid local communities of troublemakers. They can be served on anyone 10-years-old or over. According to the most recent Home Office figures, 2,455 Asbos have been issued since 1999. They have been lauded by the home secretary, David Blunkett, and held up time and again by ministers as evidence of New Labour's "tough on crime" credentials.

So far, the public and the media have tended to focus on Asbos dished out to young people. But Mallard's case - and a spate of orders against vulnerable groups such as beggars - has begun to fuel concern that Asbos are beginning to be applied inappropriately. The conditions imposed by some recent Asbos have attracted ridicule. There is the case where someone has been banned from being sarcastic (he challenged it saying he was being ironic). In another case, a boy has been banned from using the word "grass" in England until 2010. In each case, in theory, a breach could lead to a five-year jail term. On the face of it, Mallard's Asbo does not appear flagrantly ridiculous, but nor does it seem entirely rational.

Critics allege that by imposing conditions like these, Asbos are setting people up to fail - especially vulnerable individuals - who, they say, need rehabilitation, not time inside. A spokeswoman for drugs and alcohol charity Addaction says she is bewildered by the government's belief that instructing someone with a alcohol problem not to drink will be effective, and calls it "pointless". She adds: "The problem is bigger than the person. I can see how Asbos might be effective in some circumstances, but there needs to be more appropriate help for people with drink-related problems."

A spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern adds that there are worries about whether Asbos can ever be a long-term answer to "street drunks". There is no quick fix, she says, and more thought needs to go into how health services, local councils, police and the courts work together.

The charities concede that for some individuals - perhaps those who continually refuse treatment - jail is inevitable. But they insist that, once in prison, people with alcohol problems are let down by the system. They point to a Prison Reform Trust report in January that concluded that only one prison of 138 in England and Wales has a recognised alcohol abuse programme.

Civil liberties group Liberty says there are broader implications. Asbos are in danger of being used as a "back door" method of locking people up for minor offences because of the kinds of conditions applied, a spokesman says. Asbos come under civil law and are issued for offences that probably would not lead to a custodial sentence. However, as Liberty points out, breaches are a criminal offence. And, since some are for minor things (such as drinking in a pub), which would not themselves qualify for jail sentence in the criminal courts, the person being jailed need not have committed any serious crime.

"There simply is not enough monitoring of Asbos and their effectiveness," the Liberty spokesman says. "There have now been thousands of Asbos issued. It allows politicians to sound tough, but do we really know how effective they are? We are not against Asbos, but there is an argument for a full-scale review of the policy."

Rob Allen, director of campaign group Rethinking Crime and Punishment, says handing out custodial sentences for Asbo breaches appears to run "counter to the overall thrust of government policy, which is to cut prison numbers".

In a statement, a Home Office spokesman points to the fact that two-thirds of Asbos are not breached as "a clear indication of their effectiveness", and this is backed up, he says, by research that shows communities "felt safer". Labour's alcohol crime reduction strategy, announced earlier this year, is also being promoted as evidence of a fresh focus on vulnerable people with alcohol-related problems.

The government is keen to get across that it has a "tiered approach" to antisocial behaviour. It says "appropriate interventions" by agencies and social services are made where necessary. Whether ministers will listen in the coming months to the growing number of voices challenging this remains to be seen.

There are no plans to set guidelines for the conditions laid down by Asbos, the Home Office insists. They will continue to be left to the courts' discretion. Some 35% of Asbos are breached one or more times, and 18% of all Asbos handed out result in a custodial sentence. There are no figures available from government on the length of sentences. If Mallard is given the maximum sentence next week, more people may start to question the government's line.

Back at the pub, people mull over the arguments. Life is quieter with Mallard on remand, they say. But one customer sums up a reservation shared by the group. "What good is jail going to do in the end? Don't people just come out having learned other stuff about committing crime?"

The A-Z of Asbos

·Total number of Asbos issued in England and Wales between April 1, 1999 and March 31, 2004: 2,455.

·Number of applications for Asbos turned down by the courts: 42 (1.7%).

·Total issued against 10- to17-year-olds: 1,169.

·Total issued to adults 18 and over: 1,286.

·Highest number of Asbos issued by a single region: 422 by Greater Manchester.

·15.2% of Asbos are issued to women.

·If the number of Asbos given out in the first quarter of 2004 is matched in subsequent quarters, the total will be almost double that of 2003.

The following are from the most up-to- date breakdown of figures available from government (June 1, 2000, to December 31, 2002):

· 50% of breaches result in a custodial sentence (18% of all Asbos end in a jail term).*

· 35.5% of all Asbos are breached one or more times.**

· Source: Home Office figures for England and Wales collected from courts. * The government could not supply figures for average length of sentences, number of jail terms served, or the maximum jail term served to date. ** The government counts multiple breaches as a single breach. There are therefore no figures for the total number of breaches.

Teenager who terrorised elderly breaches ASBO

Oct 20 2004
IC Surrey on-line

By Kelly Ranson


A TEENAGER was back in court after breaching his Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) less than a month after it was issued.

Ricky Bailey appeared before Crawley magistrates on Friday after visiting his great-grandfather's home in Buckingham Court.

The 18-year-old is banned from the sheltered housing area for terrorising other elderly residents.

He had originally been slapped with the order on September 16 when Crawley Council supplied evidence of numerous incidents of nuisance, noise and intimidation of the residents.

Appearing in court, Bailey admitted breaching the order on October 9.

Richard Lynn, prosecuting, told the court that on October 9 police officers were contacted by Crawley Council stating that Bailey was at his great-grandfather's home.

When the police arrived he was arrested.

Mr Lynn said: "He said he had gone to Buckingham Court so that he had somewhere to sleep."

Christian Wasunna, defending, said Bailey had gone to his great-grandfather's home after he and his girlfriend were told to leave her home after an argument with her father.

Mr Wasunna said: "He was more than happy to leave and sleep rough.

"But he was with his girlfriend so they went to his grandfather's house.

"He said he fell asleep and he was found by police officers asleep about 8am."

Mr Wasunna added Bailey was now staying with a family friend and was hoping to move to Worthing.

The case was adjourned to Crawley Magistrates' Court until November 5 while pre-sentence reports were compiled.

Speaking afterwards Bailey said: "I must say we do hang about a lot.

"But terrorising elderly residents - I have never done that. I try to help."

Great-grandfather William Bailey, 86, who has lived in Buckingham Court for seven years, believes his great-grandson is harmless and describes the teen as "a good lad".

'Behaviour still a problem as red tape ruins Asbos'

Oct 20 2004

By The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

ANTI-SOCIAL behaviour orders are not working and should be looked at again.That was the claim being made today by three Kirklees councillors. Conservative councillors Robert Light, Tony Brice and Khizar Iqbal say anti-social behaviour "remains rife" in Kirklees despite the introduction of Asbos several years ago. They claim red tape hinders the effectiveness.

Asbos are made by magistrates on request of the police or council and place conditions on people who have committed nuisance behaviour. If the person does not obey the conditions, they can be punished by the courts for breaching the Asbo. Clrs Light, Brice and Iqbal say bureaucracy is stopping Asbos from being effective.They claim there is too much paperwork and evidence collection needed to put an Asbo in place. They want the Government to change this.

Clr Light said: "Although Asbo legislation has been in place a number of years, we still have a growing problem with anti-social behaviour. "It's still a very bureaucratic process. As a result, Kirklees has taken out one of the fewest numbers of Asbos in the country. "The Government has appointed ambassadors to tell councils how to do it. But it is missing the point. They need to make things simpler. The Government needs to rethink its policies." The councillors will submit a motion at a full council meeting today, asking the council to back their stance.

Clr Light added that the Conservative group also want Kirklees Anti-Social Behaviour Unit to seek more Asbos and give stiffer punishments to those who breach the orders. He said: "I would like to think that once the bureaucracy is sorted out, Asbos can be effective. "But in Kirklees we still need to be more willing to use them. "In some cases Asbos are not being policed effectively. There is no point having these orders if breaches are not going to be jumped on."

However, Clr Ann Raistrick - Kirklees Council Cabinet member for community safety - disagreed that the process was too slow. She said: "It is unclear what they mean when they say the Asbo process takes too long. "In some cases you get one immediately, in others you might need other measures first. "Where do you start counting - from when you decide to go for an Asbo or from the date you get your first complaint about an individual? There are different stages according to what is required." Clr Raistrick said imposing more Asbos should be a last resort in solving nuisance behaviour. She said: "The order itself is usually a final step. "If we have to go for an Asbo, then haven't we failed miserably by letting things get to such a level that we are having to invoke the law? "It is not about counting how many Asbos we have. It is about effective interventions that remove the problems for the local community and for the individual who is committing the nuisance. It is not as easy as saying we need an Asbo within three weeks to get them off the streets."

Clr Raistrick added that Asbos were being properly enforced. "The justice system is responding very effectively. There is a will to use the legislation appropriately."

Grandfather denies breaking Asbo

BBC: 19.10.04

A great-grandfather has denied breaking an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo).
Alexander Muat, 88, of Huyton, Merseyside, is believed to be the oldest man in the UK to be made the subject of an Asbo.

He told Liverpool Crown Court he denied harassing neighbours Alison and Derek Fowler, who say he threatened them and flashed lights into their home. He said he was the victim of harassment and was too intelligent to break the Asbo and risk jail.

The Fowlers have told the court that the retired RAF engineer threatened them by making cutting gestures across his cheeks. They also say he covered his bin in grease so they could not move it when it blocked the entrance to their driveway.

Mr Muat, who is profoundly deaf, told the court: "I am sure I am the victim of harassment. "I was not happy about the anti-social behaviour order, but I am intelligent enough not to break it and go to jail." He added that a video which appeared to show him flashing a light on and off and making the sign of the cross was actually him mimicking the actions of his neighbours. He said: "During the whole episode I was copying them, I was aping them.

"They had been flashing their lights on and off and making the sign of the cross at me so I was doing the same back." Mr Muat was made subject to the order in July 2003 and is banned from making excessive noise by banging doors and bin lids, filming his neighbours, swearing and shouting at them and driving his car into other people's driveways.

The hearing continues on Wednesday.

The High Court gave the all-clear for teenage gang members made subject to anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) to be named and shamed.

LAwzone: 12th October 2004

Lord Justice Kennedy and Mr Justice Treacy ruled that the publicity given was “justified, reasonable and proportionate”, even though the authorities did not seem to have recognised that such publicity might have infringed human rights (in R (on the application of Stanley, Marshall and Kelly) v Metropolitan Police Commissioner).

The case concerned complaints of anti-social behaviour made by residents living in an estate within the London Borough of Brent. The proceedings were widely reported, in both the local and national press. A few days after the orders were made the local authority posted details of the proceedings on its community website. Leaflets were distributed throughout the greater part of the exclusion area. In the same month the authority published a report of the proceedings in its newsletter to tenants. The publicity material carried the claimant’s images, names and ages and details of the orders issued against them. The claimants applied for judicial review seeking a declaration that their rights under art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated.

The judges dismissed the challenge, which was supported by the civil rights pressure group Liberty. Lord Justice Kennedy said that it was clear that whether publicity was “intended to inform, to reassure, to assist in enforcing the existing orders by policing, to inhibit the behaviour of those against whom the orders have been made, or to deter others”, it was “unlikely to be effective unless it includes photographs, names and at least partial addresses”.

“Not only do the readers need to know against whom orders have been made, but those responsible for publicity must leave no room for misidentification,” he said. “As to the remainder of the content of any publicity, that must depend upon the facts of the case. If, as here, residents have been exposed to significant criminal behaviour for years, and orders have been obtained by reference to that behaviour and to bring it to an end, I see no reason why publicity material should not say so.” The language used in some of the publicity was “colourful”, the judge said, but it was “entirely appropriate, and the colour was needed in order to attract the attention of the readership”.

Article written by: Jon Robins Date: 12-Oct-2004
Practice Area: Human Rights, Crime, Public Keywords: No related links

Reference Citator

[2004] EWCA Civ 683; C-418/01; 1989 AC 177; SI 2004/1235 (more...)

Naming and shaming is not against European Convention on Human Rights, say judges

Housing Today

The High Court has backed the right of social landlords to name and shame the subjects of antisocial behaviour orders.

Brent council and the Metropolitan Police had been challenged by the civil rights group Liberty, which claims the council’s publicity led to bullying and physical threats against the families of ASBO recipients.

But Lord Justice Kennedy and Mr Justice Treacy last week ruled that neither the council nor the police had breached article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights. This article upholds citizens’ rights to have their private and family life treated with respect.

Tim Winter, national organiser of the social landlords’ crime and nuisance group, said: “People using ASBOs are delighted the decision has been made at the High Court. It is essential that the community should know it is being protected, and there has been uncertainty about this until now.

“Most people who use ASBOs now will be considering publicity on a case-by-case basis.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “We are pleased the judge recognised the rights of the community in this test case.”

From April 1999 to March this year, 2500 ASBOs were granted in England and Wales.

In the case of Brent council, leaflets were handed out to residents containing the photos, names and addresses of three youths caught behaving antisocially in the London borough. The council also published their details in a newsletter and on a website.

Liberty is not planning to appeal. However, a spokesman said: “In one case, the five- or six-year-old sister of a named person was bullied at school.

“In another, the parents were told to get off the estate and physically threatened.”

Delivering the judgment last Thursday, Lord Justice Kennedy said: “Whether publicity is intended to inform, to reassure, to assist in enforcing the existing orders made by

policing, to inhibit the behaviour of those against whom the orders have been made, or to deter others, it is unlikely to be effective unless it includes photographs, names and at least partial addresses.”

Some time within the current parliamentary term the Home Office also plans to change the law so councils can inform the public about under 18s who breach an ASBO.

At present publicity is allowed about minors who are served with ASBOs.

But if they breach them, it becomes a criminal offence and automatic court reporting restrictions apply.

The legislation will still give courts the discretion to restrict publicity where they see a need in individual cases.

28 arrests in problem pub drugs swoop

Oct 13 2004

Greenwich Mercury

NEW powers were used to close a pub for two months following a major anti-drugs operation. Twenty eight arrests were made as police officers swooped on The Pullman in Woolwich New Road, at around 9pm on Friday. They were executing a drugs warrant following allegations of cocaine dealing at the venue.

The pub, pictured, is only the second venue in Greater London to be closed using the 2003 Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO) legislation. The arrests were made for alleged offences including possession and supply of class-A drugs, possession of offensive weapons and theft.

Those arrested were taken to police stations at locations across London. Five people were due to appear at Greenwich Magistrates' Court on Monday. Inspector Jim Moore, of Woolwich police, said the legislation was used to serve a temporary notice to close the pub for 48 hours before the full order was granted at Greenwich Magistrates' Court on Monday.

He said the owners of the pub, Mill House Inns, now had a "window of opportunity" to come up with a credible plan for its future, adding: "If there is no plan by December 12 we will seek its closure for a further 12 months."He added that there had been evidence of antisocial behaviour at the pub over the past two-and- a-half years.

Borough commander Chief Superintendent David Commins said: "The arrests show that we are determined to crack down on disorder and in particular the supply of drugs." A Mill House Inns spokesman said while the pub was closed for two months the firm would make improvements to the building and work closely with the police to ensure the reopened pub would offer "a safe and enjoyable evening for all". He added: "Over the years we have enjoyed a good working relationship with the police."

Teenager Faces Jail If He Dodges Bus Fares

By Hugo Duncan, PA News 8.10.04

A teenager could be jailed for five years if he uses public transport without a valid ticket.

Michael Nugent, of Westcroft Road in Withington, Manchester, risks prison and a £5,000 fine if he boards a bus, tram or train without paying.

It is part of a four-year anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) imposed on the 19-year-old by the city’s magistrates to curb his criminal behaviour.

The public transport condition is the first of its kind in Manchester, says the city’s council, and one of the first in the UK, and follows complaints about Nugent’s behaviour on a bus in the city in November last year.

Nugent also has a string of convictions for burglary and theft dating back to 2000.

Manchester City Council’s housing chief Eddy Newman said: “The people of south Manchester deserve respite from Nugent’s activities.

“He will now know that an Asbo is something with teeth. One breach could mean imprisonment.”

ASBO boy, 14, must halt race hate campaign

Manchester On-Line:

Wednesday, 6th October 2004

A TEENAGE boy has been given an indefinite anti-social behaviour order after waging a race hate campaign against a Muslim family, it emerged today.

Aaron Blinko, 14, threw bottles and stones at the family's 12-year-old son during a series of attacks that spanned several months.

The teenager, of Culcheth Lane, Newton Heath, Manchester, hurled racist abuse at the family, shot at them with a ball-bearing gun and smashed the windscreen of their car.

He also threw fireworks at the youngster and threatened to attack him when he refused to buy a bag of marijuana.

Magistrates in Manchester imposed the order at a hearing on September 28.

The blanket ban forbids Blinko from using racist, insulting or offensive language or behaviour in public, including the use of the word "Paki", anywhere in the UK.

Cannabis

He is also banned from carrying or using any weapon, including a ball-bearing gun, or any article capable of being used as a weapon. He cannot throw stones, fireworks or other missiles.

Breach of the ASBO could result in a fine of up to £5,000 or detention or jail up to five years.

He has previously been found guilty of possession of cannabis and criminal damage.

Manchester City Council housing chief Eddy Newman, said: "This boy has been acting in an appalling manner. Violent and racist behaviour will not be tolerated in this city.

"We owe it to all our residents of whatever background to protect them in every way we can. If Blinko breaks this order the consequences will be severe."

De-Toxing the Tube

Oct 5 2004

South London Press


ONE of the Tube's most prolific graffiti vandals has been sentenced to a 200-hour community punishment order.

Daniel Halpin, whose graffiti tag "Tox" can be seen on trains and buses across the capital, was made the subject of the order after breaching the conditions of an Antisocial Behaviour Order (ASBO) made against him.

The 19-year-old from Stockwell had spent four-and-a-half months on remand at Feltham Young Offender institution ahead of the sentencing hearing at Inner London Crown Court on Friday.

The court heard Halpin was caught in Camberwell bus garage in the early hours of May 17 in breach of the ASBO banning him carrying aerosols and graffiti equipment.

He admitted breaching the ASBO and asked for 20 other offences to be taken into consideration.

The court was told how Halpin had stopped attending school at the age of 14 and that both his parents were drug addicts.

Halpin's barrister, Trevor Siddle, said: "He describes his graffiti as an addiction. He accepts he needs help to stop and that the antisocial behaviour on the estate where he lives does not provide any.

"His tag 'Tox' is short for the word toxin."

Recorder Philip Sapsford sentenced Halpin, of Burrow House, Stockwell Park Estate, Stockwell, to a 200-hour community punishment order after hearing he had already spent four-and-a-half months on remand.

Speaking after Halpin was sentenced, a London Underground spokesman said: "Mr Halpin is now learning that his actions have serious consequences - graffiti is criminal damage."

Alas, you really can't legislate civility

Toronto Star 7.9.04

Everybody has a bad neighbour story — the time, for example, when you were having a small fire to roast some wieners, and the neighbours called the forestry department or the fire department to come put it out.

Or the familiar case of the neighbour who chains his dog outside, and lets it howl the night away, singing canine love songs to the moon.

There are far more serious cases, though, where neighbours do the most un-neighbourly things, and come to hate one another deeply, and sometimes even come to blows.

And then there's the law. Police forces and fire departments will tell you that they hate bad neighbour calls because everyone has a side, because they're often emotionally charged, and because there often isn't a clear way to settle anything.

For writer E.B. White, one man's meat might well be another man's poison.

For a pair of neighbours, one man's music might be another man's insufferable noise.

And no matter what a police officer does, there will be at least one unhappy party when the officer gets into the cruiser and drives away.

In Britain, the government has gotten so fed up with bad neighbours that it has introduced a law to force neighbourly behaviour — they call it the ASBO, or anti-social behavioural order. The orders are issued by local councils, some of which are more militant than others.

In all, since 1999, some 2,455 orders were requested. All but 42 were granted.

The orders can force you, on pain of prison, to turn down the music or the television — even to stop slamming your garage door at 5:30 in the morning.

Breaching an order can mean up to five years in prison.

ASBOs have also been used to deal with far more serious problems; prostitution, vandalism and teenagers menacing passersby have also been the subject of the orders.

It is, though, a backhand way to make law. Unfortunately, you can't really legislate civility. Bad neighbours — everyone understands about that. They are as obvious as peeling paint or a garbage-strewn front lawn.

But bad laws are obvious, too.

And often the only way to really deal with a bad neighbour is to hope against hope that they will just plain move away.

Britain's devilish "order" system

Denver Post: 7.9.04

We're as opposed to hooliganism and terrorizing neighbors as the next person, but we're not quite ready to tear up the Constitution in favor of Great Britain's innovative device for punishing thugs and other malefactors: The Anti-Social Behaviour Order.
The orders, known as ASBOs, were authorized in 1998 by Parliament under the Crime and Disorder Act to reduce petty crimes of the sort that make life miserable for Her Majesty's subjects unlucky enough to live near uncommon scolds and unholy terrors.

The orders have been used effectively to clear neighborhoods of prostitutes, drug dealers and gang members who preyed on the elderly, burglarized homes, and vandalized or destroyed dwellings.

But the concept also is devilishly dangerous because orders are easily obtainable and enjoin a broad spectrum of conduct. Between April 1999 and March 2004, the courts issued 2,455 but denied only 42.

ASBO hearings are civil proceedings that don't require proof "beyond a reasonable doubt," and hearsay is admissable. Evidence may be submitted "in confidence," according to a government website.

Although an order is a civil action, violating one is a criminal offense with punishments theoretically as severe as a five-year prison sentence. So far, though, the longest jail term for disobeying an ASBO has been five months.

Critics say it's unfair to put a person's liberty at risk with a lower standard of proof than that traditionally applied in criminal cases.

Most of the ne'er-do-wells ASBO'd so far are truly nasty people with criminal histories, but in Dickensian fashion, orders have also been applied to juveniles as young as 11 whose names and photographs are published in local papers. These kids aren't angels, but revealing their identity has made life a living hell for some, according to British press accounts.

Youngsters have been forbidden to use specific words such as "grass," a street term for informer, on pain of imprisonment. Others have been cited for being noisy or running through gardens.

One cantankerous old man was cited for swearing and making sarcastic comments against his neighbors. Orders obtained by city and town councils often ban a person from certain areas for years.

Thank the founders and their followers for our Constitution's free-speech provisions and due-process guarantees.

Asbos would not have kept me out of jail

Craig Morrison
Sunday September 5, 2004
The Observer

It was good to see the Prime Minister hit the ground running on his first week back from holiday as he set about tackling the problem of unruly behaviour among sections of the nation's youth.
Throughout the country people see anti-social behaviour as a blight on their communities and Tony Blair is right to address people's worries.

But I know that Anti Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos) are not the answer. The most high-profile element of the Asbos: allowing youngsters to have their name and photo emblazoned across the posters and local papers for minor offences, could well do more harm than good. They call it 'name and shame' but, believe me, the Asbo is more likely to be seen as 'name and fame' to the aspiring lout.

Why am I so sure? I am speak from experience as an accomplished student of the school of juvenile delinquency. From there I graduated easily to the college of criminality and a number of custodial sentences. So I know what I'm talking about. I look at each new crime initiative with interest wondering if it would have worked for me. This one would not have deterred me at all.

Had the Asbo concept been around at the time I was offending, I would have undoubtedly wanted to earn one to show off to my friends, just as most children enjoy displaying their better-than-expected GCSE results.

My equally anti-social associates - green with envy- would have given me a pat on the back for my accomplishment before setting off for a bit of skulduggery themselves, in a bid to match or better my achievement.

I have no doubt that for many young people aspiring to a life of crime, the Asbo has become another rite of passage towards adult imprisonment along with police cautions, and time at a secure unit or a young offenders' institutions.

Sadly, it may give chil dren who have trouble fitting in a way of winning the admiration of their peers. The poor or scruffy or daft child has always been a target for bullies, but not if he or she can be naughtier, not if they can be 'named and famed'.

I know the Asbo is a civil measure - that the criminal offence only happens after an Asbo is breached. We won't be branding these young people as criminals, just anti-social. But I know from personal experience that once you are labelled you become resentful. And resentment can be quickly followed by defiance and misplaced pride.

As in other areas of life, you are only as good as your last accomplishment, so in order to get the accolades of your peers, you must continue to produce the goods. Once on that road, it's easy to get lost, as I found to my bitter cost

In my experience the only boys in my crowd who would have been deterred by an Asbo are those who would go home to a savage beating at the hands of a bullying parent.

I don't have the answer, but I know the Asbo quick fix will not work. My own turning point came when someone pointed out that other kids from a background similar to mine - the sort currently on the Asbo hit list - might be looking to me as some sort of role model. Until then, I'd had a lifetime of being named and shamed and told publicly and privately just how bad I was.

By that time I was in my mid-twenties and serving a seven-year sentence at Wormwood Scrubs. Someone had the inspired idea to get me working at a special unit there with disruptive children - exactly the sort of young people who now receive Asbos.

I was in a better position than any authority figure to tell them what really lay ahead for them, without labelling them 'anti-social' or anything else. And it made me feel I was doing something positive for the first time in my life. That unit has now, tragically, closed down because it was judged too expensive.

My chance came because I happened to be in one of the few places within the penal system where instead of dehumanising you, they treated and spoke to inmates as fellow men.

Finally, someone had made an effort to treat me like a fellow human being. I started acting like one.

Children bear the brunt of "anti-social behaviour" measures
- Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO's) target children and protestors

Statewatch 5.9.04

On 19 July the Home Office launched a five-year strategic plan entitled Confident Communities in a Secure Britain which Tony Blair claims marks the end of "the 1960s social-liberal consensus on law and order" that has enabled some to take "freedom without responsibility". It is the latest step in the government's drive to cut crime by 15% over the next four years and reduce "anti-social behaviour". The main points are:

* Fixed Penalty Notices extended to cover more crimes such as under-age drinking, petty theft, shoplifting and the misuse of fireworks

* Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) to have their process of application sped up to a matter of hours and media reporting of those who break them to be made easier

* Numbers of Community Support Officers (CSOs) to rise to 24,000 by 2008.

* 12,000 police officers to be freed for frontline duty by reducing paperwork

* New £36 million unit to offer support to witnesses and crime victims

* Doubling of electronic tagging to 18,000 people and the introduction of satellite tracking of offenders

* Number of pilots for "Together" schemes to be increased from 10 to 50. The 50 worst offenders in each area will be "named and shamed"

* Under plans to be published in the autumn, local communities will be able to trigger snap inspections of their local police force, call for increased use of curfews and ASBOs, and set priorities for local policing. The levelling of petitions is the example Blunkett gave of how they would do this

* Specialist anti-social behaviour courts and prosecutors to be created, and legal aid to be "streamlined" so that by 2005 a system of fixed fees will be in place

* Everyone entering or leaving the country, after 2008, to have their photo taken and "facial mapping" technology to be used

The package was greeted with uniform hostility from opposition parties who claimed it to be little more than an attempt to grab headlines. Indeed, there are very few new measures, rather just modifications to existing mechanisms for combating anti-social behaviour. Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, claimed that "this government promised to be tough on crime and the causes of crime. We have seen a lot of get tough rhetoric but little progress on tackling the causes". Criminalising low-level nuisance behaviour is not likely to reduce the public's fear of crime. It is children, in particular, that seem to be the target of this anti-social behavioural clampdown having already faced increasing restrictions of their civil liberties over the last five years.

For example, a new power, introduced under the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, which allows for the dispersal of groups (defined as two or more people) gathered in an area deemed to be an anti-social "hot-spot", has been frequently applied. This is regardless of age and time of day and refusal to obey can lead to arrest. The Act also provides for the taking home of anyone under the age of 16 found on the streets after 9pm who "is not under the effective control of a parent or a responsible person aged 18 or over". In Wigton, a Cumbrian market town, children were banned from the town centre after dark for the two-week duration of their Easter holiday. Summer "curfew" zones have also been established across London, (in Trafalgar Square, Regent Street, Camden and 14 other areas), in which children are not allowed to gather. If they ignore an order to disperse they could be held in a police cell and later handed custodial sentences or a fine of up to £5,000. Many other areas have pursued similar policies.

Police-style security and drug checks are also being enforced in schools. Sniffer dogs are regularly used in over 100 schools throughout England and Wales according to Drugscope, a UK drugs charity. Twelve police forces have taken up the scheme with a further 15 said to be interested in setting up similar projects. The Guardian newspaper says that:

"A common approach is for a police officer to demonstrate their sniffer dog to an assembly while another dog is sniffing bags left behind in classrooms. The children are also individually sniffed as they leave" (18.5.04)

A Kent police survey found that some children felt they had been lied to about the bag searches, and were uncomfortable around the dogs. Headteachers are apparently also turning to Drugwipe products which can conduct two minute drug tests detecting any traces of cocaine or ecstasy left on desks and keyboards. Drugwipe claimed, in June 2004, that 30 schools were using these tests. Martin Barnes, chief executive of Drugscope, argues that "these measures risk driving drug use further underground, an increase in truancies and exclusions and a breakdown in trust between pupils and schools." Concern was also voiced by Chris Keates, the acting general secretary of the teachers' union, NASUWT: "We are extremely concerned about the apparent trend for some schools to use private companies, whether or nor they are using dogs."

Children are also bearing the brunt of ASBOs, whose numbers have doubled over the last 12 months and the application of which has sparked much controversy. A key part of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 they came into force on 1 April 1999 and were later modified by the Police Reform Act 2002 and the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003. Breaching an ASBO is a criminal offence and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Moreover, as a civil law matter the burden of proof is lower than in criminal cases, and hearsay evidence is admissible. Home Office guidelines for the Crime and Disorder Act had stated that "ASBOs will be used mainly against adults" and only against children in exceptional circumstances. This has been far from the case.

Alarmingly in June a ten year-old in Birmingham was punished with an ASBO by the City Council for anti-social behaviour. Manchester City Council has received particular attention for the large number of ASBOs it has issued for a range of far-reaching sanctions. These include meeting more than three non-family members in public, the wearing of a single golf glove, the use of the word "grass", and misbehaving in school. Five years in prison await these four children should they ignore the orders.

The misuse of ASBOs also extends to other areas such as environmental protestors (for example at the Newchurch Guinea Pig Farm). Similarly, in June, protestors gathered at Caterpillar construction company's offices in Solihull to demonstrate, as they had on previous occasions, at their continued sale of bulldozers to Israel. This time eight out of the 11 protestors were arrested under ASBOs. In Rugby, a man who has campaigned against the council over issues such as health and safety and corruption was served with an ASBO. Having broken it he is now on remand at Blakenhurst prison staging a hunger strike. Bizarrely in Rushmoor, Transco, a national gas company, was served with an ASBO after one of its buildings was spray-painted with graffiti and they had failed to clean it up quickly enough. Clearly ASBOs are being used well outside their original remit of dealing with "nuisance neighbours" with this trend only likely to accelerate as more police forces and councils begin to recognise its potential for quashing challenges to authority.

Those exercising a legitimate right to demonstrate are being criminalised under these measures. As are children when, without having committed or even been charged with a crime, they are liable to five years in prison if found standing on a forbidden street. This on the basis of an order attained through anonymous hearsay evidence and judged upon the "balance of probability." National Youth Agency development officer Bill Badham claims the use of ASBOs to prohibit children using certain words, wearing certain clothes, and banning them from congregating in certain areas serves to "criminalise young people for non-criminal activity." This represents a shocking reversal of the principal of innocent until proven guilty. The government appears happier to fine and alienate a 10 year-old child than to address the symptoms of "anti-social" behaviour.

A 2001 study by the British Medical Journal emphasised that the best way to tackle the latter is to provide their parents with a structured training programme at the earliest possible stage. ASBOs often seem to do little more than further alienate children already feeling disassociated from the society in which they live. Moreover, many apparently see the orders as little more than a badge of honour. Of course in all cases, ASBOs will only be effectively enforced if there is a high level of public awareness of which individuals are under them, hence the drive to "name and shame" people through leaflets and local papers. The 20,000 new CSOs will perform a similar function, but with the public now having a large role in both the issuing and enforcing of ASBOs there would seem to be a lot of potential for abuse. Regardless, it represents the latest step in the privatisation of police roles and powers (see Statewatch, vol 14 no 1).

Plans to create a national database containing the confidential details of every child in Britain will also be added to the Children's Bill in the autumn. There will now be cradle to grave surveillance, and according to Barry Hugill of Liberty, "a national database through the back door. You start with information about all the children but in 20 years' time you've got almost half the population." (see Statewatch News Online, March 2004)

The Prime Minister's recent soundbite blaming the 1960s for making these measures a necessity, argued that its eroding of individual responsibility has led to an onslaught of anti-social behaviour. No attention is paid to the promotion of individualism in the Thatcherite era, which many would argue played a significant role in the dismantling of civic society. This was followed by the Labour government's agenda on the privatisation of police roles and powers. Moreover, the claim that crime has dropped by 39% over the past nine years while Britain's prison population has risen by 25,000 over the last decade needs an explanation.

Home Office Strategic Plan: "Confident Communities in a Secure Britain", CM 6287; Guardian 2.4.04, 18.5.04, 20, 25, 24, 27.7.04; BBC 18.5.04; Independent 20.6.04, 20, 22.7.04; Times 20, 25.7.04, 25.7.04; Evening Standard 18.6.04; Belfast Telegraph 11.6.04; Just News May 2004. (This feature first appeared in Statewatch bulletin, vol 14 no 3/4) Filed 5.9.04

City ready to take its law and order crusade to others

Manchester's pride at restoring order to housing estates

David Ward
Wednesday September 1, 2004
The Guardian

Manchester is Britain's unashamed capital of anti-social behaviour orders.

Councillors are proud that Asbos have helped to bring order back to some of the city's estates, and have little truck with those who worry about the rights of those targeted.

Since 2000, Manchester has taken out 474 Asbos against 280 individuals whose activities have featured in the Manchester Evening News beneath headlines such as "Yob is banned from airport", "Terror reign thug barred from street" and "Banned yobs may go to Europe".

Not all alleged yobs have been teenagers: more than 60% of the orders have been issued against adults, many of them young men in their 20s.

The city is also proud that Bill Pitt, head of its nuisance strategy team, has been seconded to the Home Office to become an anti-social behaviour "ambassador" to encourage other towns to follow Manchester's lead.

"Bill Pitt's secondment to the Home Office is a powerful confirmation of the council's work in tackling anti-social behaviour," said Eddy Newman, the executive member for housing.

"Manchester's team are the most active in the UK in gaining around 4,000 successful legal actions against nuisance tenants to date. Only 17% of perpetrators breach their orders sufficiently to require criminal action in the courts."

Asbos issued in Manchester have banned three boys from going anywhere near the city's airport without valid tickets. One youth was banned from wearing a glove - a gang emblem - and another was banned from using a laser pen after allegedly shining it in the eyes of bus drivers.

The city also claims it issued the first Asbo to cover behaviour in a classroom and the first linked to domestic violence. Another Asbo banned an alleged car thief from every car park in the UK.

A 13-year-old was banned from parts of the city for two years after neighbours claimed he trespassed in gardens, tormented residents, vandalised property and shouted abuse.

In January, Greater Manchester police won Asbos against four alleged gang members. The men were banned from wearing body armour or riding bicycles anywhere in the city.

Last year the former executive member for housing, Basil Curley, rejected claims that the orders infringed human rights. "Somebody from Liberty rang up to complain and I offered to let him park his BMW in any of the streets where we are having problems," he said. "He did not take up the offer."

ASBOs work: let's have more of the same
Daily Telegraph (Filed: 01/09/2004)

It is refreshing that Tony Blair used his first day back at work to address one of the biggest irritations in British life: anti-social behaviour. While it remains highly unlikely that any of us is ever likely to be murdered or raped or beaten up, anybody who has to visit a town centre from time to time will have grown miserably used to the grinding familiarity of graffiti, litter and verbal abuse on every street corner.

The odd thing about the anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) that the Prime Minister praised yesterday is that it actually works. In the blizzard of Home Office legislation introduced since 1997, the ASBO is exceptional in that both the police and the public like it, and criminals don't.

Admittedly, ASBOs took a long time to get going. They were introduced in 1999 and were barely used for a couple of years. Now they're being introduced across Britain at a rapidly escalating rate - 1,323 orders were made in the year to March, 117 per cent up on last year, as the Prime Minister trumpeted yesterday.

That may be an odd boast for a government to make; the Prime Minister is effectively saying there are a lot more yobs about. Well, he's right, as anybody tramping the city streets at night, with their eyes fixed on the pavement to avoid confrontation, knows.

And the ASBO is an excellent way of combating that booming number of aggressive thugs. Essentially, the ASBO is a type of curfew that bars people from entering certain areas and from threatening witnesses in court cases. In and of itself, it is a civil measure imposed by a court. But once the curfew is broken, the punishment that is imposed is drawn from criminal law: typically, a prison sentence of several days or weeks.

The ASBO has several advantages over other measures in the Government's anti-crime armoury. It can rely on hearsay evidence and can be imposed on suspected thugs before they actually commit a crime (although they tend to have a criminal record).

These advantages are the same characteristics that have civil rights campaigners up in arms. Their complaints are all well and good when held up to examination in the comfort of the saloon bar or the lecture room. But they fall on deaf ears in the blighted council estates and high streets where ASBOs are concentrated and have been well-received.

The typical ASBO is requested of the court by council officials in poorer areas of the country, not usually the natural home of the Draconian punishment. But so scarred are those areas by anti-social behaviour that they're delighted with the ASBO. Labour-dominated Camden council, a traditional haven for bleeding heart liberalism, is the most vigorous enforcer of ASBOs in London.

In his attitude to ASBOs yesterday, the Prime Minister showed a straightforward understanding of what people are really worried about. Is it too much to hope that we might receive more of the same this autumn?

Getting aggressive over yobs

Antisocial behaviour orders, aka Asbos, were brought in to help tackle yob culture. But poor take-up by councils has led to a flurry of government activity to refine them and encourage their use. John Martin reports

Guardian - Tuesday August 31, 2004

Asbo ambassadors are only the latest in a long line of remedies aimed at bolstering a faltering ideal.

Introduced by the then home secretary, Jack Straw, in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, antisocial behaviour orders were meant to be the government's main tool in tackling "yob culture"; an issue that filled MPs' postbags.

Asbos, which came into effect in April 1999, are civil injunctions which councils and police forces can apply against anyone over 10 years old who has been causing harassment, alarm or distress in a neighbourhood. Breaching the order is a criminal offence and carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail.

Originally intended to tackle noisy neighbours and vandalism, they were later extended to take in such offences as public drunkenness and dropping litter.

However, early take-up of the new powers was disappointing and patchy. By the end of 2000, only 140 Asbos had been issued, despite repeated pleas from ministers for councils to make more use of them.

A year later, the total had risen to 466 orders - more than half of them issued by just seven of the 42 police force areas across the country. Some areas issued no Asbos at all.

Councils and police forces complained that the process was too cumbersome and bureaucratic. A Home Office report found that it took an average of 66 days to get an order granted and nearly six out of 10 cases required three or more court hearings. The average Asbo was costing more than £5,000.

Stung by the failure, the government announced a review. The result was the Police Reform Act, which came into force at the end of December 2002. It greatly simplified the process of applying for asbos and introduced interim asbos which allowed police to take immediate steps against antisocial behaviour before the court process had begun.

The scope of organisations able to issue the orders was widened to include housing associations. The Antisocial Behaviour Unit was established in 2003 to draw up new plans and fund 10 trailblazer areas to pilot new ways of using the orders more aggressively.

Eventually the hard work began to pay off. By the middle of 2003, more than 1,300 Asbos had been issued. But still the government was not satisfied.

Councils, landlords and the police were given further powers to disperse young people who gathered in antisocial hotspots under the Antisocial Behaviour Act, which came into force at the beginning of this year.

In the summer, the government announced an extension in the issuing of Asbos to community groups. Petitions, public meetings and highly-localised referendums can be used to impose the orders, which will be rubber-stamped by councils or the police.

Other ideas have included awarding up to £5,000 for those brave enough to testify against nuisance neighbours in court; launching a helpline to advise frontline staff on dealing successfully with antisocial behaviour; and appointing 12 specialist prosecutors.

This summer's five-year crime plan announced further measures: new antisocial behaviour response courts; a streamlining of legal aid to avoid late guilty pleas; and the waiving of anonymity to under-16s who breach Asbos.

The flurry of activity is likely to continue while asbos fail to live up to their promise.

British government crackdown on louts worries some, delights others

JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, August 31, 2004

A teenager is forbidden to say "grass." A great-grandfather is banned from being sarcastic. And two record companies are told not to put up advertising posters.

All have fallen foul of the British government's latest weapon against petty crime, vandalism and hooliganism -- the anti-social behavior order, known popularly as an ASBO.

Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday hailed the growing use of the orders as a response to the concerns of voters who live in the less genteel parts of Britain -- where disputes are more likely to end in a head-butt than a biting witticism.

"It doesn't always get the headlines but if you've got really difficult people living next door or down the street ... it makes life absolute hell," Blair said during a visit to Harlow, 25 miles northeast of London.

The orders have been used to ban thousands of people, some as young as 10, from associating with certain people or engaging in activities as varied as shouting, swearing, spray painting, playing loud music and walking down certain streets. Breaching an order is a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Supporters say ASBOs are a valuable tool against persistent offenders.

But Rob Allen, director of the think tank Rethinking Crime and Punishment, criticizes ASBOs as one-sided, relying totally on punishment instead of including incentives to better behavior.

Some local authorities have been accused of interpreting "anti-social behavior" too broadly. In June, record companies Sony and BMG stopped were threatened with ASBOs by a local council in north London upset that they were putting up advertising posters without authorization.

Critics say orders can be sweeping or hard to obey, like the four Manchester teenagers banned from saying "grass" -- slang for "informer," and allegedly used to intimidate neighbors -- or the prolific burglar banned from visiting unannounced or phoning any house in the country for five years.

Supporters acknowledge that ASBOs function in the gray area between boorish behavior and outright crime. The British Crime Survey found that 33 percent of respondents cited teenagers "hanging around" on local streets as a big problem.

A problem, perhaps, but not a crime. Critics also point to cases like that of Alexander Muat, 87, a great-grandfather brought to court in Liverpool for breaching an ASBO that bars him from shouting, swearing or making sarcastic remarks to his neighbors.

"The last time I looked it wasn't a crime to be sarcastic," wrote columnist Nick Cohen in The Guardian, slamming the government for "the criminalization of everyday incivility."

Anti-social behavior orders were introduced in 1999 to counter "loutish and unruly conduct," and given a boost in October when the government launched an Anti-social Behavior Action Plan, vowing to tackle everyday incivilities from "nuisance neighbors" to begging to graffiti.

It is rare for an order to be refused -- 2,455 orders were issued nationwide to the end of March, more than half of them within the latest year, and only 42 requests were turned down by the courts.

Advocates say ASBOs are overwhelmingly popular with people affected by vandalism and petty crime.

"We've seen what happens when you've got no control, when people are running wild," said Peter Cuming, who helps lead a Neighborhood Watch group in north London. His group, a multi-ethnic mix of middle-class and lower-income families, says ASBOs helped clear away drug dealers, beggars and prostitutes.

"A year ago, you could have looked out my window and seen five or six drug dealers at any time of day," Cuming said. "We've gone from bleeding-heart liberals to absolute reactionaries on this one."

Orders against children have caused the most controversy, because the subjects of ASBOs can be named. Some councils have put up posters and distributed leaflets carrying offenders' pictures and encouraging residents to report violations.

Allen, the ASBO skeptic, cites a local newspaper headline that branded two boys aged 10 and 11 as "imps of Satan."

"That's potentially quite a destructive approach to kids as young as 10 or 11, many of whom have serious family difficulties," he said.

Supervision order follows ASBO breach
By Louisa Biswas: Staines Guardian: 27.8.04

A 12-YEAR-OLD Stanwell boy has been handed a six-month supervision order, after he breached his Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) by committing a public offence and two assaults since the full ASBO was issued.

The youngster, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared before the North Surrey Youth Court, in Staines, on Wednesday, August 18, where he was convicted of committing two assaults, in Chobham, in June; breaching his ASBO, in Staines and Chobham, during May and June; and a public order offence, in Staines town centre, in May.

The court ordered the youth to pay £60 costs and his mother was given a three-month parenting order.

Speaking about the supervision order, Spelthorne's Acting Borough Inspector, Alan Sproston, said: "We are increasing our response to anti-social behaviour, which includes the policing of anti-social behaviour orders and subsequent breaches.

"This individual has continued to act in an anti-social manner, even after the continued efforts from a number of agencies to help him overcome his behavioural issues.

"Residents in Spelthorne should not have to tolerate this type of unacceptable behaviour. If further breaches take place, then I will ensure he is dealt with swiftly and decisively by police."

A full ASBO was issued, in April, against the 12-year-old, after residents complained to Surrey Police, Spelthorne Borough Council and Airways Housing Society, about his behaviour.

However, it took two years for the residents to agree to make statements to Spelthorne Borough's Community Incident Action Group (CIAG), which is made up of 15 different agencies.

Karina Van Dijk, North Surrey's ASBO case builder, said: "It is reassuring for the community to know that not only are police and other agencies working together to achieve ASBOs, but that breaches of orders are also a priority."

Her views were echoed by Louise Kelly, tenancy enforcement officer for Airways Housing Society, who added: "Clearly, the boy involved in this case is a continuing nuisance to his immediate and surrounding communities.

"We will continue to observe the situation and welcome the co-operation of the community as a whole."

North: Rights group slams Anti-Social Behaviour Orders
25/08/2004

Breaking News.ie

Children’s rights organisations in the North have attacked new laws intended to tackle anti-social behaviour which came into force today, claiming they do not work.

The Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) mean those named in them could be banned from neighbourhoods. Children as young as 10 can be targeted under the legislation, which is already operating in the UK.

Anyone who breaches the order could be fined or face up to five years in jail.

Northern Ireland Criminal Justice Minister John Spellar warned offenders the punishment will be severe.

He said: “This provides another tool in dealing with behaviour of this kind which can ruin lives and local communities. It complements measures which already exist and lets those who act in an anti-social way know that they will face firm sanctions.

“We will be working with all the agencies to make sure this legislation is used early and effectively.”

Orders can be imposed by a magistrate in cases where there is no associated conviction.

Police, district councils or the Housing Executive can all urge the action against anyone they believe poses an anti-social threat.

But the courts will have discretionary powers to impose reporting restrictions and prevent children being named and shamed.

However, Koulla Yiasouma, director of Include Youth, said: “The problem is that ASBOs are being held up by government as the answer to all our prayers but in reality they are nothing of the sort.”

Children’s Law Centre director Paddy Kelly claimed the legislation clearly infringed on young people’s rights.

“Anyone who is charged with a criminal offence is entitled to have their day in court, to have a fair trial,” she said.

“However, because ASBOs are obtained in the civil court, the same safeguards are not in place. We are therefore simply criminalising children by the back door.”

Sinn Féin’s human rights spokeswoman Caitriona Ruane agreed, accusing the British government of ignoring the clamour of opposition.

“The decision to force through this legislation against widespread concerns demonstrates a pig-headed arrogance,” she said.

SDLP equality spokeswoman Patricia Lewsley claimed the authorities had let down all young people in Northern Ireland by introducing such harsh measures.

She said: “They are willing to tag people as young as 10 as criminal – this is insane and completely disregards equality legislation, in particular by failing to consult with young people.”

Being a yob is no crime

Zoe Williams
Tuesday August 24, 2004
The Guardian

Youths wearing Burberry shirts in Leicester town centre have been banned from two pubs owned by the Barracuda Group. Mild amusement was afforded at the weekend by the fact that Tony Blair was photographed wearing a Burberry top in Italy, though what with the high probability that this was a freebie from a prominent Italian - and not to wear it might be considered an affront that would lead to his getting less free stuff next year - he has so far escaped a ban from any drinking establishment.
Oh, and besides, the ban only applies where the uniform bisects other telltale signs of hooliganism: travelling in a large group of same-gender friends, cutting your hair short, making a lot of noise. PC Karen Holdridge, of Leicestershire police's violence and disorder team, said: "Well known football hooligans have a dress code. These people are recognised as coming into the city centre day in, day out and causing trouble."

Sure, sure - all very true, but omitting to mention the fact that a lot of people wear this stuff who aren't hooligans, for the simple reason that it is trendy. This is no Clockwork Orange garb sought out so that a trio of young psychos can look threateningly different. Everyone wears it; Danniella Westbrook wears it; the only reason I don't wear it is that I'm too middle class, plus the skirts are too short and they show my fat bits.

Here's the rub - people talk about "yob culture" and "hooligan culture" to describe behaviour that is usually not illegal, causes no lasting damage, but that they just find very annoying. That milky suffix "culture" allows tags of criminality to be applied to people who have committed no crime. Naturally, these men wearing Burberry might go on to commit a crime. It is likely that the people who will commit a crime at the end of the night, or at some later point, will own a garment featuring the distinctive check. But it's equally likely that everyone facing any charge of high-level fraud owns a shirt by Hackett, or Thomas Pink.

Numerous crimes - pretty much all crimes that aren't domestic - are associated with structures of fellowship: groups whose momentum in pursuit of their common interest interferes with their personal ethics. This momentum might come from booze or it might come from farcical amounts of money. It might gather more pace in groups who have less to lose. Reason still dictates that you can't exclude or castigate people for sharing a sartorial profile with other people who behave criminally.

So what is this behaviour, that Blunkett et al feel legitimate in describing as yobbish, and yet isn't illegal? Principally, it is being drunk and noisy. This irritates me as well. But I'm way more irritated by art students, with their piping, over-confident voices, bellowing on the top of the bus about some tripe that involves cutting turf into the shape of a car. (Man alive! They've disturbed a relationship between rural and urban!) I'm irritated by braying, corn-fed men in rugby shirts. In other words, people with very posh voices, who don't have the grace to camouflage or muffle them, send me crazy. And don't think this is irrational. In parading, rather than hiding, a moneyed accent, people are saying: "I'm not ashamed of the privilege of my class. Indeed, I think I deserve it. This whole business suits me rather well." That's social carelessness.

Then there is obscenity. A judge recently barred a juror for wearing a Fcuk T-shirt. What is the world coming to when you can be offended by an anagram? Max Hastings, on these pages, described upbraiding a youth for having "I am a cunt" written across his top. OK, it's a bit balder - but a caramel silk vest top from Jaeger, a flock of cashmere pashminas, a pair of Tod's men's driving shoes: these all say, "I am a cunt" to me. Graffiti annoys a lot of people. It tickles me. If we are talking about polluting a public space with coarse messages, I feel more offended by almost all adverts (at the moment: "It's not your shirt, it's not your job, it's not your blah ... it's your watch that says the most about you." Just Fcuk off!

And what does that leave us, yobwise? It leaves us with litter. Litter really is bad. I used to be an inveterate litterer until a bloke saw me drop an apple core on the floor of a train and said: "People like you think there are people born to clear up after you." I was so ashamed that I picked it up and ate it. Yes, even the hairy bit.

Otherwise, if you mean criminal, say it, and back it up with actual crime. If you mean noisy, say noisy. And if you mean I just don't like young, working-class people, then for God's sake say so. Don't hide behind yob, or culture, or any combination thereof.

Banned from every UK home

By Rachel Sharp
17.8.04 This is London

A PROLIFIC distraction burglar who caused misery for dozens of households across Hillingdon has been banned from knocking on any door in Britain.

In a legal first, John Cash, fo no fixed address, was handed the five-year anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) which even prevents him phoning a house without permission, along with a seven-year prison sentence.

Cash, 30, was sentenced on July 30, to seven years at Harrow Crown Court after conning his way into more than 150 addresses in Hillingdon, Harrow and Bucks using every imaginable excuse. In all, he was linked to more than 250 distraction crimes across the region.

The 30-year-old heroin addict often pretended to be from the water board to persuade his elderly victims into letting him into their homes.

The ASBO will start when he is released from prison, and the terms prohibit him from calling at any residential premises without the prior permission of an occupier, engaging in any behaviour which does or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to any person not of the same household as himself. He is also not allowed to misrepresent his intentions, actions or identification to any person, organisation or business.

DC Sean Almeida, from Harrow police Identified Suspects Unit, said: "The ASBO is a tremendous tool in helping to ensure he doesn't have the opportunity to offend again. He preyed on the elderly and vulnerable and duped them into believing him and he left his victims, many of whom were already fragile, traumatised.

"I hope today's sentence provides some justice to the victims who suffered as a result of Cash's actions and they can feel reassured that a dangerous man will be behind bars for a long time and they will be protected when he is released."

Police rap court over ASBO ruling

IC Surrey Aug 19 2004

By John Williams


THE POLICE are to complain to magistrates after they believe that a persistent offender got off lightly.

Nicky English, 22, formerly from Ashtead and now living in Cobham, appeared before Redhill magistrates on August 3 for two counts of breaching the conditions of his Anti-Social Behaviour Order put in place a year ago.

Superintendent Martin Parker said: "This 22-year-old has been a persistent nuisance in the area of Leatherhead and this is why the order was imposed on him in September 2003.

"A breach of an order is a serious offence and the courts have the power to deal with it robustly, even to the point of being able to send an offender to prison.

"This was his third appearance in court for breaches but he was given what effectively amounted to an extra three weeks on an existing weekend curfew."

Superintendent Parker believes that the magistrates' decision sends out the "wrong message" about how seriously ASBOs are taken by the courts and that it was "disappointing".

English was given a two-year drug treatment and testing order for offences committed since February 2003 including thefts, taking cars, assaults on police officers and drugs offences.

Under the ASBO he was forbidden from entering any off-license, or assaulting, harassing, alarming, intimidating, threatening, abusing or distressing any person in Surrey.

"It is my belief that this sends out the wrong message about how seriously ASBOs are taken by the courts. Local police officers worked hard on bringing the original ASBO file to court and in producing the evidence of the breach of that order," he explained. "This individual has taken up a great deal of police time and resources and it does not surprise me to hear that the officers involved feel let down by the magistrates' decision. I have sent a letter to magistrates to explain my feelings on this occasion."

East Surrey Police quoted a similar case involving a 15-year-old boy from Reigate and Banstead borough who was arrested and charged with burglary and pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods.

Superintendent Parker said: "His relatives only agreed to have him back on bail if he was tagged, but he cut off his tag, which is criminal damage, and broke the conditions of his bail by spending the night out.

"Despite this history when he was brought back before the court they sent him to a foster home without a tag - and some might say inevitably he absconded within 25 minutes of arriving there."

Police are now searching for the youth and using up resources which they say they can "ill afford".

Yob, 31, jailed for breaching Asbo
20th August Shropshire Star

A north Shropshire man was today jailed for six months after breaching his anti-social behaviour order during a disturbance at a town recreation ground.

Lee Zeuce Mills, of Whitchurch, had been due to stand trial at Market Drayton Magistrates Court for breaching the five-year order.

But before the case got under way he changed his plea and he admitted he had caused or threatened violence towards a person or persons and caused alarm, harassment or distress, which he was prohibited from doing as part of the order.

Geoffrey Dann, prosecuting, told the court that Mills, 31, had been made the subject of an anti-social behaviour order in November 2002.

He said Mills, of Castle Court, was arrested after an incident at the recreation ground area in Wem, where there was a fair, on June 12.

Mike Stephenson, for Mills, said his client had drunk too much alcohol and did not know how he had ended up in Wem but had no money to get home, so he had asked a group of men for money.

She said Mills was the first person to be struck and told police he had picked up the bottle to defend himself.

Mum pledges to fight Asbo laws

Aug 20 2004 IC Coventry

By Liz Hazelton


Coventry mum Joanne Hopkins has pledged to fight for a change in the law after her son's behaviour put the family home under threat.

The 36-year-old says the system has virtually criminalised her and put her in a Catch 22 situation instead of punishing 16-year-old Danny, who is the subject of an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo).

Earlier this month, landlord Jephson Houses Housing Association served a seeking possession notice on the family, with the threat of legal action to follow.

But Mrs Hopkins, backed by a 36-name petition and the support of her neighbours, is prepared to fight to the end for her Dalton Gardens home, in Wyken.

That means bringing her case to the attention of councillors, MPs, MEPs and, if necessary, Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mrs Hopkins said: "The anti-social behaviour law for children under 18 needs to be changed because it isn't being fairly applied.

"Asbos are not the answer. It's not working the way the government wants it to work.

"Danny has seen one of his friends breach his order 11 times before he was sent to prison. My son just doesn't believe that's going to happen to him.

"I can't help the police to help my son because if I report him to them for something he's doing in my house that gets me into trouble with my landlord.

"I got to the point last year where I rang social services saying I wanted to put him into care but they refused because he has a supportive family.

"It's caused me so much stress and anxiety. I feel people think they can do whatever they want to me and my family because of everything that's happened.

"I don't see how throwing Danny out on the street is going to help him, which is what a lot of people have told me to do. He's not a piece of rubbish that I can throw in the bin."

Mrs Hopkins admits her son has behaved anti-socially and caused problems locally.

But she says he needs help rather than being completely marginalised by society, even if that means him being sent to prison.

Mrs Hopkins and her supporters are now putting together a case to stop the family, including Danny's brother Ray, 18, being thrown out on to the street.

VICTIM OF TEEN GIRL YOBS

Leeds Today

By Richard Edwards and Alison Bellamy 16.8.04

THESE are the horrific injuries suffered by Gil Threadgould at the hands of two teenage girls.

The 35-year-old from Armley, Leeds, was hit in the face with a wine bottle and repeatedly punched by the girls at 6pm outside his home, after trying to break up a fight as they attacked his partner. He was defending Gaynor Edwards, who has been under siege in her own home since she moved in two years ago.

Council worker Mr Threadgould said of the attack: "There were about 15 youths outside and they were threatening Gaynor and starting to fight with her, which is not uncommon. They were punching me and then one of them hit me in the face with a wine bottle. Then another girl came for me with a fist.

"I didn't want to hit back as they were girls, so they literally had a free rein of punching me. I was left with a five-inch gash."

The couple have paid the price for standing up to the young thugs blighting their community. Others are too frightened to stand up to them. Miss Edwards moved into her Simpson Grove home in July 2002 and instantly became a target for the yobs. Beer cans and stones would be thrown at her windows, washing stolen from the line and shredded, her catflap kicked in and her shed blown up with high-powered fireworks.

But Miss Edwards said that behaviour was not particularly extreme for her part of Armley: "It wasn't just us, everyone was having to put up with it." Residents fought back and a number of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos) were secured against local louts, including Stephen Gedge, who was made the subject of one of the toughest ever Leeds orders last January, when he was 13.

Gedge had become notorious in Armley after committing offences including burglary and riding in stolen cars. His Asbo banned him from entering about 100 streets near his Third Avenue home.

There are currently 14 Asbos in place in the Armley area. After the Asbos were secured Miss Edwards said she enjoyed a short period of peace before the anti-social behaviour took a more chilling turn.

She said that as she had always stood up to the louts, they have incorrectly fingered her as the main player in the push to gather evidence needed to secure an Asbo. Miss Edwards said that she now gets abusive gangs congregating outside her home, and that she is verbally abused almost every time she walks down her own street.
After the wine bottle attack last October, her partner Mr Threadgould was attacked again last month when a thug went for him with lumps of wood. He escaped serious injury. And Miss Edwards says she is living in fear after the most recent threat from the gang. She added: "They have said they will burn the house down. It is because I stand up for myself, I go out and confront them and they don't like it."

Councillor Les Carter, Leeds City Council's executive board member responsible for neighbourhoods and housing, said: "We are working closely with the police to identify the people responsible for this unacceptable intimidation and will take appropriate action to put an end to it. "The council is continuing to take a tough stance against anti social behaviour in Armley and we are doing our utmost to stamp out yobbish behaviour to improve the lives of residents. "We urge members of the public to continue to report all episodes of anti social behaviour to the police or our anti social behaviour unit so action can be taken to punish those responsible."
Police said there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution against those responsible for the attack on Mr Threadgould.

Drunken neighbours slapped with Asbo

Wandsworth Guardian: 12.8.04

A middle-aged couple who forced their neighbours to move house because of their drunken, noisy and abusive behaviour have been told they could face jail.

Peter Dyson, 51, and Fiona Shaw, 54, of Taybridge Road, Battersea, have been given an interim antisocial behaviour order (Asbo).

The order bans them from persistently knocking on neighbours' doors or ringing their doorbell.

It also stops them causing a noise nuisance by shouting, yelling and slamming doors.

A spokesman from Wandsworth Council said: "One set of neighbours were forced to sell their house and move from the area because of the disruption caused by Mr Dyson and Miss Shaw and the effect it was having on their children. Another was often forced to flee her home and stay with friends because of the continual swearing."

The couple, who share a ground floor flat in Taybridge Road, have been warned they could face five years in jail if they breach any conditions of the Asbo.

The interim orders will run until September 9 when a full hearing will be held.

Teenager is hit with five-year ASBO
Aug 11 2004

Middlewich Chronicle


A TEENAGER who terrorised a community has been given a five-year Anti-social Behaviour Order (ASBO) to curb her actions.

Kayleigh Hodgson, 18, who has a string of previous convictions, was hit with the order, which will last until August 9, 2009, at Vale Royal Magistrates Court yesterday (Tuesday).

The order, which was enforced after an interim order was granted earlier in the year, prevents her from entering the Over Estate in Winsford without prior written permission and from carrying a hammer, a golf club or any other weapon in public.

In June the court heard that Hodgson has 11 previous convictions for 16 offences, which include assault, criminal damage, affray, possession of an offensive article - a meat cleaver and a 4in knife - and taking a motor vehicle without consent. If she breaches the order she can face a custodial sentence of up to five years.

Hodgson is also not allowed to enter or loiter within 25 metres of Weaver Vale Housing Trust offices.

Other restrictions on Hodgson include acting, or encouraging others to act, in an anti-social manner, threatening to, or inciting or encouraging others to, engage in violence or damage to any person or property.

Using foul, abusive, insulting or threatening words or behaviour to any person, and being drunk or consuming alcohol in any public place except on licensed premises.

Vale Royal and Congleton police sergeant Alison Wheeler said: 'The case has been a lengthy process against this individual, who has persisted in causing disruption and intimidation within the Winsford area, through physically and verbally abusing the local community.

'With the dedication of Vale Royal Partnership and commitment from the community, we have again achieved an excellent result of being able to protect the community from this type of behaviour and the individuals who commit it.'

The ASBO kicks in immediately, but Hodgson is currently on remand in custody for separate matters. Any breach should be reported on 01606 48000. Anyone with queries in relation to the order can call PC Nikki Mankee on 01244 614232.

New Labour guilty of anti-social behaviour

11.8.04 Socialist Worker, carried by Indymedia

BECCY PALMER is a youth worker in west London. She has seen first hand how New Labour’s new clampdown is tearing communities apart.
WHOLE COMMUNITIES are being criminalised—in the name of reducing crime. New Labour is handing out Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) like confetti. ASBOs are effectively banning orders. They can be served on people (usually young people) to restrict them from going to a certain place, associating with particular people, or even dressing in a certain way.

There are already laws against the behaviour most of us describe as “anti-social”—smashing up bus shelters, for example. ASBOs are something else. They are a restriction on someone’s freedom even where there is no proof they have committed a crime. An ASBO is not a criminal charge. But breaking the terms of an order is a criminal offence that can lead to five years in jail.

The kind of restrictions being placed on people are incredible. One man who was born and brought up in Brent, and still living there, was banned FOR LIFE from setting foot in the borough. Others, in their teens, have more local banning orders, but they last for up to 25 years. In one case a group of young people were banned from having any contact with one another, and barred from a part of the borough. It meant they could not attend the local youth club either together or individually. There was a course on one evening a week designed for young people who had got into trouble. It was perfectly suited to these teenagers. When they appealed for the ban to be changed so they could attend the course, they were told to go back through the courts—a process that would not even have begun by the time the course had finished.

No one is pretending there aren’t real instances of “anti-social behaviour” in Blair’s Britain. But the evidence is mounting up that ASBOs are not only not a solution, they are becoming part of the problem. A batch of orders was issued after housing department officials had spent a year collecting evidence on a group of young people. Most of what they were accused of was the kind of stuff we all did as teenagers. So why were 12 months spent spying on them rather than sorting the problem out?

The council then published the lads’ pictures in the local press, handed out leaflets with their faces on and sent the images round the council’s computer system.The leaflets called on people to look out for these young men and ring up if they were seen together.

A group of men from outside the area then descended on the estate armed with baseball bats threatening to “sort out the troublemakers”. That’s more than “anti-social”. It’s threatening serious violence. But no action was taken against that gang. When the police arrived on one estate over an incident entirely unrelated to the young people who had been ASBOed, they ended up handcuffing an eight-year old to the railings. That kind of outrage is the result of a whole community being labelled as anti-social or, to put it bluntly, as scum.

There are many, many other examples.

One young man was stopped by the police 35 times in three months. No charges were brought, but he was served with an order. Young people are simply being treated as criminals for hanging around together or dressing in a certain way. And behind it all is a desperate rundown in services and opportunities.

There used to be 39 youth centres in Brent. Now there are three. And there are fewer youth workers. It’s not as simple as just the lack of youth facilities—though people realise there is nothing for young people to do. It’s about the whole government approach. They talk of community values but rip communities apart.

One set of figures tells you everything about New Labour’s approach. The budget to improve youth services across London is £11 million. The budget for implementing the anti-social behaviour clampdown is £65 million.

The government pays lip service to the problems people face, and then tries to blame social problems on a minority of “bad people”.

But a backlash against New Labour’s repressive measures is developing. A group of us are trying to initiate an open letter and a campaign highlighting the ASBOs scandal.If you want to be part of that, then get in touch. And let Socialist Worker know what’s happening in your area. Let’s stand up for working class communities and refuse to be silent over this.

Rap fan banned from owning stereo
Music so loud it moved neighbor's furniture
Tuesday, August 3, 2004 Posted: 1625 GMT (0025 HKT) : CNN

LONDON, England -- A British woman has been banned from owning a stereo or a television after playing music so loud that furniture in neighboring flats was moved by the vibrations.

Birmingham City Council welcomed the two-year Anti-Social Behavior Order (ASBO) against 33-year-old rap and karaoke fan Sharon McLoughlin, who is also being evicted from her flat.

The council tenant became the English midlands' city's first person to lose her home and to be made subject to an ASBO for playing loud music after a judge at Birmingham County Court agreed to serve the order on her Monday, the UK's Press Association reported.

District Judge Alistair MacDuff QC granted the city council possession of the property within 14 days and prohibited mother-of-three McLoughlin from owning any electronic music equipment or television while she resides at the flat.

She was also banned from causing harassment, alarm or distress anywhere in England and Wales for two years.

Eminem fan McLoughlin, of Stechford, Birmingham, had been handed an interim ASBO on June 30, prohibiting her from generating excessive noise.

McLoughlin had also been served with a Noise Abatement Notice, leading to the seizure of audio equipment, including a karaoke machine, on three separate occasions.

The court heard that the music was so loud that it vibrated the floors of the flat above, moving furniture.

On one occasion, while speaking to witnesses in the property most affected, an officer from the Birmingham Anti-Social Behavior Unit (BASBU) could hardly hear what the residents were saying even though she was only around 6ft away from them, PA reported.

BASBU Manager Ian McGibbon told the UK news agency: "This is an excellent example of officers from different council departments working together to solve a problem effectively.

"Even though environmental health officers had seized equipment from the property, McLoughlin showed absolutely no regard for her neighbors or the law and obtained more equipment.

"Now, she is banned from owning equipment while she remains at Donnington House and causing a nuisance wherever she goes and if she breaches this she faces arrest."

John Lines, the City Council's Cabinet Member for Housing, added: "We are pleased that the courts have dealt with this matter decisively, as this woman has shown complete disregard for previous actions by environmental health officers and BASBU officers who attempted to modify her behavior."

Turning right to wrong

New Labour will do anything to stay in power, including playing on our greed and our fears

Nick Cohen
Sunday August 1, 2004
The Observer

If the government has its way, the next election will be fought over men like Alexander Muat. The 87-year-old great-grandfather and veteran of the Second World War represents everything New Labour wants a third term to combat. He was put in his place last year after a dispute with his neighbours - he said they trampled his flower beds, they said he was a rude old man. The courts served him with an anti-social behaviour order and warned that he would go to prison if he was caught swearing at or making sarcastic comments about his neighbours and their visitors again.
The last time I looked it wasn't a crime to be sarcastic. But when Tony Blair's aides promise that 'we are going to ensure that law and order is debated in the Commons every day in the six months before the election', what they mean is that men like Muat can be sent down for shouting 'you're no better than you ought to be' at a neighbour. Sergeant Mark Stanton of Merseyside Police admitted the restrictions on Muat's freedom of speech were 'stringent' but said the old soldier had to learn 'what is acceptable behaviour within a community'. And so must we all as Labour forges on with its historic mission to turn the British into the Swiss.

How long can it be, for instance, before the 'badgers' of the Forest of Dean are taught that society won't tolerate unacceptably behaved sheep? The badgers are members of the Commoners' Association which has had the right to let flocks roam common land in the Hundred of St Briavels since the Norman Conquest. Every now and again the sheep jump garden walls and munch their way through herbaceous borders. After they have dined long and well, they leave their droppings on paths and lanes. Tony Wisdom of the Forest of Dean District Council said that disputes between villagers and badgers had been going on for generations. Blows have been exchanged and tyres slashed. Villagers have alleged that 'rogue' badgers 'go around cutting fences, so the sheep can get to fresh grass and so on but the problem is getting enough evidence to prosecute them'.

New Labour has solved the problem. The presumption that a badger is innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt of a criminal offence, which dates back to Magna Carta, if not 1066, has been dismissed as an impediment to an acceptably behaved Britain. The council is considering applying for anti-social behaviour orders to be enforced on the badgers, and if it wants them it will get them with ease.

Alert readers may have noticed that whenever the government goes on about anti-social behaviour it rages against crack houses and vandalism. It's as if it wasn't a crime already to take class A drugs or smash windows and the police were powerless before the gangsters and thugs until Tony Blair intervened. In truth, anti-social behaviour doesn't have to be remotely criminal. A badger or anyone else only has to be guilty of behaving in a manner 'likely to have caused harassment, alarm, or distress to someone not of his/her household'.

Once the order has been made, the suspect can be jailed for up to five years for any breach, however tiny. Thus, and I'm not making this up, a man who had an anti-social behaviour order prohibiting from being noisy had to appeal to Harringey magistrates to get him out of prison for the 'crime' of belching on a communal fire escape.

Sometimes anti-social behaviour is genuinely criminal. Earlier this month we had the case of the Blind Groper of Wallington, which sounds funny until you think about it. Neil Middlehurst preyed on the kindness of strangers by grabbing the breasts of women when they tried to help him. Middlehurst was duly imprisoned for sexual assault. On release an anti-social behaviour order requires him to place his hands on the shoulders of women who take pity on his blindness and offer to guide him.

That may seem fair enough but the fact remains that if Middlehurst assaults another woman he will have committed a criminal offence and could and should be tried and convicted. The wonder of the new system is that he doesn't need to have committed a criminal offence before being sent back to jail. A hand landing on a woman's head or wrist may be enough.

The criminalisation of everyday incivility is the government's response to what has been a dreadful miscarriage of justice. Crime rates have fallen off a cliff in the past decade. As unemployment has collapsed so has criminality. But no one gives Blair (or, rather, Brown) a scrap of credit. The public is in a state of fear. On closer inspection, what people are frightened of isn't always real crimes but the young hanging out on street corners, tattooed boozers pouring beers into their bare bellies outside pubs, children kicking a ball against a wall long after bedtime and vaguely menacing beggars demanding money. The noise and the boorishness inspire the feeling that the world is going to pot in your averagely stupid swing voter in a key marginal.

There are as many explanations of unwarranted fears of crime as there are criminologists. Maybe the insecurities of the global economy are too complicated to understand and people compensate by concentrating their anxieties on the local problems. Maybe consumerism has bored so deeply into the national consciousness that the intolerant and selfish demand the law be used to punish anyone who annoys them as they enjoy their inalienable right to get and to spend.

That there is a political market for tearing up the basic presumptions of English law is, however, indisputable. Last week the Economist quoted Stuart Chapman, a chief superintendent from South Yorkshire, as saying that 'I never thought that I would live in a country where the police would have these powers'. It then said that councils in South Yorkshire had callers demanding the police act against colicky babies who cry in the night. Don't laugh, it may happen. It is equally indisputable that the political response to public demand is seedy and dishonest.

Millions of words have been written about the nature of New Labour. The best way to understand it is as a machine that keeps the Conservative Party out of power by stealing Conservative policies. 'Triangulation', as it's known, involves occupying Tory ground and pushing the Conservatives out to the electoral wilderness on the far right.

It's been a brilliantly unprincipled and successful strategy which has reduced the once-mighty Conservatives to a fringe group of embittered pensioners. Blair turns to it whenever he's in trouble, as now. But triangulation can't work for ever. The Tories have seen through it, and much to David Blunkett's fury occasionally oppose the government from the left when it proposes abolishing trial by jury or removing asylum seekers' rights of appeal. Blair tries to play the race card and the crime card against the Liberal Democrats. But accusations that they are soft on villains and wogs aren't stopping the Liberals taking Labour seats.

Beyond the politics of positioning, the giddiness of the triangulation mania may finally be taking a practical toll after all these years. Between the 1997 and 2001 general elections 31 law-and-order bills were presented to Parliament. Between 1997 and March 2003 New Labour created 661 new criminal offences. Between the June 2001 election and June this year the government launched 154 anti-crime initiatives - about one a week.

The police are pulled this way and that as one target succeeds another. Morale in the Home Office is dismal as civil servants prostitute their talents on meretricious policies designed to grab a headline in the Express or a few seconds on the evening news. Above all, triangulation has filled the jails. When Blair began triangulating the Tories on crime in 1993, the prison population stood at 41,000. Today it's 75,000 and there's no money to build new jails. All the blind groping towards ever tougher postures can't hide the reality that the Government is going to have to let people out or stop sending them in.

Perhaps then even an electorate as easy to manipulate as the British electorate is going to realise that for more than a decade their fears have been exploited by anti-social elements who treat them as rank buffoons.

When home's a prison

The political debate on Anti-Social Behaviour Orders may be clear - they either cut crime and mend society, or betray socialism and civil liberties - but what do they really mean for the families hit by them? Decca Aitkenhead finds out

Saturday July 24, 2004
The Guardian

One of the unusual things about a boy with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order is that everybody knows where to find him. When a child is convicted of a criminal offence, the anonymity to which young offenders are ordinarily entitled prevents you and me from discovering his name, what he looks like, or where he lives. This protection has a long legal tradition. Had Michael Talbot therefore been prosecuted for, say, burning down a house, I would never have found him. But as the subject of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo), the 13-year-old's name had been made public property. It was simply a question of knocking on his door.

His mother opened it. Susan Ashton is a small, fiery Mancunian with bright, indignant eyes and a great deal to say. She was so angry that the words came tumbling out in a chaotic fury - and to anyone with misgivings about the justice of Asbos, it was precisely the kind of story that will worry them.

Early last year, the council applied for an Asbo against Michael. He had been accused by neighbours of trespassing in gardens, tormenting residents, vandalising property and shouting abuse. A court heard the complaints - some submitted anonymously - and granted an Asbo banning Michael for two years from areas of the north Manchester estate where he lives. Asbo cases are heard in civil courts, so the complaints against Michael did not have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, but merely judged on the balance of probability. Yet now, if Michael - who has never been convicted of, or even charged with, a single crime - is caught simply standing in a forbidden street, he will be committing a criminal offence that can carry a sentence of up to five years.

"And all that for knocking on doors and running through gardens! Isn't that what kids do? That's not anti-social behaviour." Susan Ashton stabbed a finger. "The courts are full of shit. Put that down. I mean, it's not as though he comes from a bad home! We've worked all our life. You name it, he's got it." She pointed around the immaculate lounge, at its plump sofas and faux-marble fireplace. "But they can be telling a pack of lies about you once these allegations have been made, and you've got no say in the matter."

Michael came down from his bedroom. He is a slight, dark-haired boy, handsome but awkward, poised between childhood and adolescence. "I probably shouldn't have done some of the stuff I did," he mumbled. "But you know, they were, like, childish things, like knock-a-door run or ghost knock, where you tie a bit of string. Really childish things."

Michael's cousin was being threatened with an Asbo as well. The courts were handing them out "like hot dinners", his mother claimed. "These neighbours, they're all people who are old and they want children to be seen and not heard - but you can't bring them up like that. This is just a kid growing up and getting a little bit giddy and learning by his mistakes. They aren't naughty. They're just little boys growing up."

Susan Ashton works as a cleaner for the council. She is not a student of jurisprudence, but she has a powerful instinct for the legal anomaly of her son's situation, so her fury is sustained by bewilderment. How can it be that her son has never been charged with a crime, yet faces the threat of prison for doing something not even illegal? "I've lived here all my life. I've voted Labour all my life. What's going on?"

Labour runs Manchester City Council. Since Asbos were introduced five years ago, Manchester has issued more than 300 orders - almost twice as many as any other city in the country - and has led the field not only in numbers, but in the imaginative audacity of its Asbos. Some orders have included a ban on riding a bicycle in the city centre, on meeting more than three non-family members in public, on wearing a balaclava in the street, on wearing a single golf glove. One Asbo received nationwide coverage in January for its ban on a 14-year-old boy saying the word "grass" anywhere in England or Wales until 2010, and in April a city magistrate served what was believed to be a first, banning a 16-year-old boy from misbehaving in school. If he disrupts a class, he can now be sent to prison.

These restrictions are difficult to enforce unless the local community is made aware of them, so Manchester has printed almost 200,000 leaflets, delivered through neighbours' doors, each one listing an Asbo's prohibitions and urging residents to report any transgression. "Not Wanted" posters have been put up on some streets and the Manchester Evening News has assisted by publishing on its front page the names and photographs of the "yobs". The police are delighted, and the naming and shaming is hugely popular with residents, who sense that their quality of life is finally being taken seriously.

The man responsible for stretching Asbos to their legislative limits is Basil Curley, Manchester's executive member for housing. A gruff, lifelong Labour man, he is proud of his record as the Asbo pioneer and tired of "people who live in Surrey" talking to him about civil liberties. Curley has no patience with the suggestion that Manchester is instituting a kind of authorised vigilante justice, or effectively writing its own laws, jailing people for offences that no parliament would make punishable by prison.

"We could prosecute all these yobbos in a criminal court if we liked," he told me. "But because we're a caring council, we want to give everyone an opportunity to change. We're not about criminalising people, we're about getting them to change their behaviour, and this is a warning system."

Was he worried about putting 10-year-olds' faces on the front page of newspapers? "If kids are capable of going out and robbing someone in their 80s, they've made a decision about that, haven't they? It's about decisions and free will. You know," he sighed, "it's not about middle-class people setting rules or standards for working-class people. A lot of us came from poor backgrounds; I know lots of people whose parents split up, and they didn't go round putting fireworks through people's doors or wrecking people's cars. Deprivation isn't an argument. The people who come to us to demand improved standards are working-class people."

Deep inside Manchester town hall, a gothic cathedral to municipal socialism, Curley and his team believe they are fighting for the left, and winning. "Do you understand what we're doing?" his deputy appealed. "We're dealing with Mrs Thatcher's grandchildren. We're dealing with the children of the people who grew up under Mrs Thatcher, and were brutalised. We're recreating society. Putting back some of the social glue. We have nothing - nothing - to be ashamed of as socialists. If you're rich, you can buy yourself out of it, but these things take place among deprived communities. They want social glue and that's what we're trying to give back to them."

Very few issues can be more intimately sprung to the dynamics of New Labour than anti-social behaviour, for it captures the confusion of what it means to be progressive. Anti-social behaviour has manoeuvred socialists into positions they remember sounding rightwing 20 years ago, and induced the zealotry some need to steady their nerves. Fighting the behaviour with Asbos has given many on the left their first authentic sense of victory - of yielding power on behalf of the vulnerable - and the fight has the pleasing ring of populism. It communicates the party's transfer of faith from the delicacies of moral idealism to the dogma of what works.

It is probably because of this that Asbos tend to be discussed in black-and-white terms. Do they work or not? Are they right or wrong? Does Michael Talbot's Asbo help glue society back together, or betray socialism and civil liberties? Yes or no?

The political debate has such appealingly sharp edges that it is tempting to hope the same definition can be found in the actual lives of people who behave in an anti-social fashion. My experience of three families with Asbos was that all of these questions were simpler to answer the less time one spent with them. Proximity to their lives blurred the edges so quickly that any hope of answers vanished, and even the questions became almost meaningless, lost in the drama of domestic turmoil.

Just south of Hyde Road in Gorton, east Manchester, a lattice of Coronation Street back-to-backs limps into this century, scarred by boarded-up windows and broken-down doors. The Ward family lives on one of these streets - almost literally, in fact, for their house spills on to the pavement in a trail of broken toys, a one-wheeled bicycle and a dismembered shopping trolley. The windows of the house have been haphazardly patched with Perspex; the front door, re-hung back to front, hangs crooked and is slightly ajar. As I pushed it open, I thought I might have stumbled upon a burglary. Then a quilt on a sofa stirred and Eileen Ward sat up, rubbing her eyes.

Eileen, 17, and her sister Kathleen, 15, achieved local notoriety last August when they became the first sisters to receive Asbos. The pair were accused of threatening behaviour, of using foul, racist language and of stealing, and were banned from a large area of Gorton. Their family had to leave its three-bedroom council house because of the Asbos and had moved into this privately rented address, where exposed cables hung from the ceiling like vines, every single kitchen drawer and door dangled from its hinges, jumble piled up in heaps and the floor was a jigsaw of broken lino, bare boards and worn carpet.

By the time Eileen was fully awake, the room had filled with children. There are seven; after Eileen and Kathleen come Barbara, 13, Tommy, 11, Lizzie, nine, Jimmy, five, and Douggie, four. Kathleen was no longer living with the family, but the house still overflowed, for none of the children had been to school since they had moved. They appeared to be unravelling dangerously, the little ones tearing through the house, randomly violent, toothless, in tatters and filth.

With her wide, blue eyes, creamy cheekbones and full lips, Eileen is startlingly beautiful; in another life, she would look like Kate Moss. But in this one, worn down by a bad reputation, her youth has already begun to fade. "I'm a nice person," she protested, between scolding and soothing her baby brothers. "I'm not a proper thug, I don't think I'm hard. But having an Asbo, it's not nice, it's disgusting. People stare at you when you're on the bus. It's shameful." She sagged and shrugged. "People won't give me a second chance. It's hard to get a job. They say, 'We'll get back to you, Miss Ward.' Only they never do."

Why not come back later and meet her mum, she suggested. She had been dying to tell her side of the story, only nobody would listen. "Mind you," Eileen grinned, "you'd better bring a bigger notepad."

Zach Tutin is the infamous teenage boy whose Asbo bans him from saying "grass" until 2010. The order also outlaws the words "slag", "cripple" and "Paki", and bans Zach from using the main thoroughfare of Moston, east Manchester, where he lives with his mother. Outside the house, an aborted "Zac" had been sprayed in shaving foam on the pavement, beside a pool of vomit and a crumpled lager can. The door was answered by a small, olive-skinned boy.

Zach finds it difficult to talk about himself. A presumption of non-cooperation competes with an impulse to boast, and the challenge of chronological order only makes matters worse. The biggest challenge, though, is concentration. "I can't sit here for 20 minutes and just talk," he said, and it was true. "I've got a short attention span." A psychologist had told him this when he was 11 years old.

His parents had separated when he was eight. His father, who is Asian, stayed in touch, but his mother disappeared completely, so Zach and his younger sisters lived with their grandmother. By 11, Zach was in serious trouble. "I got done for battering someone. I had to go to court but then, before that, I battered him again. And then I got done for arson. And it just carried on from there. I've been hit for loads of things. Lost count, me."

His mother unexpectedly returned when he was 13. "It made me feel a bit better," Zach conceded, "her coming back. It felt good." He and his younger sisters moved back in with her. "But I was angry as well." He got expelled that year, for "slicing someone's legs. 'Cause he called me a - " Zach isn't allowed to say the word, but it was "Paki".

Did people often call him a Paki? "Sometimes."

Was it fair for the school to expel him? "I suppose so." His eyes gently closed, overwhelmed by a veil of boredom. Then, as if suddenly worried I might not think to ask, he volunteered: "I've been locked up before." Interest secured, he could retreat again, and the awkward dance of information resumed.

We met several times. Sometimes Zach would appear stoned, and the tattered terraced house was usually full of teenagers. His father collected him most mornings to go to a special school for excluded pupils, but the days passed in shapeless boredom and distraction. Zach's mum, only 33 herself, would come and go, by turns cheerful and harried, yelling about the mess. Her moods were voluble and transparent, whereas Zach's were unreadable, hidden behind small black eyes.

Zach was the least indignant person I met in Manchester. He has travelled beyond defiance to a place so closed down that he can reflect on his circumstances with anaesthetised indifference, sounding almost philosophical. Lacking the hope that defensiveness would require, he has arrived at more or less absolute fatalism. "You always think it won't happen again," he mumbled. "But it always does."

The local press have called Zach a thug. His father said he's just a boy whose short life had been very, very hard. I asked how Zach would describe himself - and for the only time the anaesthetic lifted. "I can't describe myself!" Surprised, without a script, he looked lost. Pressed again, he shouted to his friends in the lounge for help.

"Pain in the arse!" one shouted.

"Funny!"

Zach relaxed. When I tried again, he made as if the question was stupid. "I don't know. Cheeky. That's it." What else? "Just ask the questions!" His face burned with anger. "Ask another question." Coaxed once more, he folded up with confusion. "I can't describe myself. 'Cause you don't know how you act sometimes, do you? I just do things. I don't know."

Eileen Ward was right about her mother; she had a great deal to say. Of necessity, she said it all at volume, screeching above the pitch of the telly and the roar of her children. At 41, Kathleen Ward's blue eyes are still bright, but the rest of her has worn like her voice, ragged from fighting a losing battle. "Jimmy, will you have manners! I'm speaking! Oh, he's a hyperactive child, that's what he is. Problem child, I call him. You usually get one in the family, but I got seven."
Sometimes I would call at lunchtime and the children would say she wasn't up yet. At other times, she was out at her sister's, for the regular phone call to her daughter, Kathleen, or to her husband, Tommy, who was locked up. But most of the time I'd find her in the one downstairs room of their two-bedroom terrace, battling to stay afloat in the bedlam of family life. There were days of relative calm, when the weather was dry and the children played out in the street. But on rainy days, when the room heaved like a storm, the little ones would lunge at her like a life raft, and it looked as if she might drown. "Honest to God, my nerves; I'm ready to crack."

Kathleen Ward was born and raised in Manchester, but her family - like her husband - are Irish, and she attributed many of their troubles to anti-Irish racism. "We used to get letters through the letter box: 'Go back to Ireland.' We had the house shot up. Three bullets through the window ...

"Douggie, will you sit down! Honest to God, they don't know how to sit down properly ...

"I have had fire bombs through my letter box. My windows getting broke." The litany went on - one council officer was "the most racist woman you'll ever meet".

Eileen agreed. But then, there was the time Eileen was shot at on her way home from the chip shop; that might have been something else, a mistaken identification. And the boy who had pushed young Tommy off a wall and broken his leg, Eileen's Asbo was entirely down to his grandmother. In the turmoil of dramas, blame was continually reassigned, the only constant being a flame of indignation. "I would never report anything to housing, I'm just not one of them women. And now I'm dragging my kids from pillar to post. A two-bedroom house with seven of us! And they say they won't put my children in school until I get a permanent address. Honest to God, it's ridiculous. You know, the paedophiles, they never get named and shamed. And there's me with seven kids. All they ever done was stick up for themselves. You've got to defend yourself, haven't you?"

In Kathleen Ward's mind, the family's troubles all began when her husband was sent to prison. "It was a different life before that, I swear to God. Oh, you know the peace I had. With their dad, it's like magic. I tell you, he is so strict. They are so scared of Tommy, and he doesn't even hit them. His voice is enough for my children."

But in 2001 Tommy was sentenced to eight years for armed robbery. "Oh God, my world was taken away from me. An hour's luck in my life I've never had. You know, Tommy was a great father. And he's a good husband. He was never violent. But Tommy used to warn them, if I ever see somebody hitting you, I will kill you if I see you walk away. You've got to hit them back."

"We was never bad," Eileen said ruefully. "We was never wild. I was no trouble. But people try to take the piss."

Tommy's legendary severity has been canonised since his incarceration, but it used to make Kathleen Ward weep for her children, and in between bursts of praise for her father" Eileen would agree he was too strict. "And he was still strict," she added one afternoon, "even when he were on drugs."

I'm not sure whether Kathleen Ward would have mentioned that Tommy was smoking crack at the time of his arrest, but she was reluctant to defend him. "He said, 'I'm sorry, I went through a bad phase', he said he was wrecked out of his head. He said he went on the rock because of what happened to Eileen." She shook her head. "But to me it's an excuse."

What did happen to Eileen? "Oh," Kathleen said, she was abused. She was nine. The boy who did it was 16." Eileen added, "It ruined my life."

Kathleen Ward keeps her family on £147 social security and £60 child benefit a week. The children eat and sleep when they can, the little ones scaling the kitchen cupboards for bowls of cereal, and wander the streets at will. The council won't re-house the family unless Kathleen signs an agreement to keep her two eldest daughters away, but she refuses; Eileen functions as a surrogate second parent, dispensing sweet money and refereeing the ceaseless uproar. And Eileen needs her mother, for this summer she is having a baby herself. Eileen and her 17-year-old boyfriend do not know how or where they will bring it up, and faced with their unknowable future, the entirety of their lack of planning seems to reassure them. If nothing has been set up, nothing can go wrong.

I asked Kathleen on several occasions if she thought anyone had ever had grounds to complain about her family. Every time, her face - usually so distracted - would stiffen, poised for self-defence. "Noise," was the halting reply. "Yeah, sometimes the kids could be very, very noisy. I'll hold up my hands to that. But the lady next door was all right, she never had anything to complain about. She'd shout like, shut up, but you know, all right. She just didn't like the music."

One afternoon I passed by their old council house. The neighbour's door opened a crack to show half the face of an elderly, frightened woman. She had lived there 30 years, she said, and known nothing like the Wards. "Throwing stuff over the wall. Banging on the door. Swearing. Police always being called. Noise was terrible. She were all right with me, the mother. But the kids couldn't be told. And he was always beating her up. The woman who moved in after them, she had to move out. The kids were always shouting through the letter box, 'This is our house!'"

You might not want to live next door to the Wards. But have the Asbos actually helped? The government has dispensed with legal nicety in favour of "what works", so the question is whether they do.

According to Curley, only a third of Manchester's Asbo cases result in prosecution for breach of order. But a lawyer whose firm regularly represents clients facing Asbos in the city told me she could think of only one instance of an Asbo that had not ended in prosecution. Other lawyers I spoke to were less pessimistic, but none thought two-thirds of people with Asbos stayed out of the criminal courts.

The disagreement may arise from the fact that many are prosecuted not for breach of their Asbo but for other crimes. You could argue that, because they had obeyed the terms of the Asbo, it had been effective. But if they had gone ahead and broken other laws, you might wonder what the point of the Asbo had been. Moreover, a great number of orders contain prohibitions against offences that are already illegal, and it is up to the courts to decide whether it is worth prosecuting for the breach as well as the offence.

If an Asbo is essentially a warning system, as Curley has said, then the only one that can be said to work completely results in prosecution neither for breach nor for any other offence. But what kind of person would receive such a successful Asbo? Probably somebody young, at the humble end of the anti-social spectrum. "This is not about a group of kids playing football or riding bikes," Curley told me. But logically, at its most successful, it would be. At this point, we are talking about using quite draconian legislation against youngsters who have done little wrong. Youngsters, in other words, such as Michael Talbot.

The 13-year-old's mother appeals to history in defence of his behaviour. "Playing football and running through gardens" - this is what boys have always done. But is Susan Ashton a reliable witness? One of the neighbours who made statements to the council was Patricia O'Reilly, and she presents a problem for instinctive critics of Asbos. A sensible working-class widow in her 50s, she saw nothing traditional about Michael Talbot's behaviour.

"He was the ringleader, and they were terrorising people. It was awful, really, really bad. They were wrecking trees, jumping in privets. They were just bent on damaging. And they think they've a right to do it. That's what I can't stand, me. We didn't go and do damage when we were young, you just wouldn't have done. And to throw mud and stones at old people in their gardens! Terrorising the neighbourhood, picking on elderly people on their own, tearing up plants, running riot through the estate. Of course, we all used to knock on people's doors. We did knock-a-door, but you'd do it one time, you wouldn't go back three, four, five times a night, every night. I mean, that is ridiculous. It would drive you barmy."

Patricia O'Reilly wonders what would have happened had Asbos not existed. As it is, "That Michael Talbot stays in now, he don't go out. So the Asbo, it's worked. The estate's lovely and peaceful now. It's wonderful. Personally, I think the younger you get them, the better."

Far from being a liberal's worst nightmare, you might say a case like Michael Talbot's is the exemplary face of Asbos. It is certainly an advert for the "younger the better" approach, and evidence that Asbos can work. Peace has been restored to an estate and a young boy steered back from the brink of delinquency. Here was an Asbo successfully restoring the glue of society.

But Curley said something disturbing. He did not see his role as merely restoring pre-Thatcherite social values. His job was about reinforcing new ones - and ones with a decidedly Thatcherite flavour. "Yes, we used to bang on doors when we were young," he agreed. "But there used to be badger-baiting once, too. It's different now isn't it? Things are moving on; people want to live differently. It's right that people have high expectations for themselves. It's about respect."

Were we being disrespectful by running in gardens when we were children? "Oh, absolutely. People have higher expectations now. We don't want people running in our gardens. It's unacceptable. We have moved on; we want more."

This sentiment runs to the core of anti-social debate and may explain the discrepancy between the crystal-clear severity of policy and the haphazard reality of its impact on the families it targets. Modern politics proceeds on the broad assumption that everyone in Britain today is more or less the same. We want the same sort of homes, watch the same TV programmes, share the same values and aspirations. We expect the same privacy in our gardens. To varying degrees, we all belong to the same class.

But Susan Ashton does not mind children running through her garden, Zach Tutin does not share Curley's vision of Manchester, and the Wards inhabit another universe altogether. One of Zach's friends, a brash girl in sportswear and big hooped earrings, nearly fainted when she heard me ask our photographer where he lived. "What?!" she gasped. "You'll get in a car with him, and you don't even know where he lives?" These children may be bold, but they are not modern.

In today's political discourse, families such as these can be recognised only as problems. But what of their own problems? If we scrutinise the Wards through the lens of a society that has "moved on", we register only the terrible shape of their deviance, never the detail. Curley is correct; their former neighbour, a scared old woman, is not "middle class". But the Wards are becoming the Victorian undeserving poor.

So much of these families' narrative is unknowable - the chaos of local feuds, the self-delusion and counter-allegation ("You look in her rubbish bins, you'll not find food, it's all empty cider bottles") - that very few observations can be made with confidence. But one of the few irrefutable claims the parents made was that, unlike their accusers, they were unafraid of children. "How can normal adult people be scared of a young boy?" demanded Susan Ashton. "Why not talk to the kids, get to know them? They aren't horrible! You've just got to be on their wavelength."

Anti-social behaviour is often attributed to "a breakdown in family values", but you will seldom meet more ferociously close families than these. "I'd die for my family," said Eileen Ward. "I'd kill for my family. My family's my life. When I see my mum happy, I'm happy. When I see her sad, I'm sad."

The difficulties seemed, if anything, to stem from an excessive family bond. Susan Ashton's intensity towards her son both infantilised and aggrandised him; while she raged in his defence, Michael fidgeted in uneasy silence, compromised by her passion which cannot allow him to speak the truth. Zach Tutin's mother was deaf to confession.

"Zach call some woman a cripple? No! He'd never dream of it!"

"I did," Zach said, quietly. "She was horrible."

"These people!" His mother swept his words aside. "They can't let kids be kids, can they?"

"And I smashed the windows, yeah."

"Every kid smashes windows! He's a boy, isn't he? You know what, they're all dead talented, Zach and his mates. The way they MC and everything."

If family loyalty can obscure the truth, at times the very concept of truth is problematic, being infinitely elusive and elastic. The Wards survive on an endless refrain - the house has just been cleaned, is about to be cleaned - in a never-never land of delusion in which their imagined existence can never match their reality. "We're very clean people," Eileen declared, surrounded by unutterable squalor. "Dirt's disgusting."

Eileen and her mother argued about her boyfriend one afternoon. Kathleen Ward hasn't trusted him since he beat up her daughter. "What about Dad?" Eileen demanded. "He used to hit you."

"Your father never laid a finger on me! Not once!" flamed Kathleen Ward. Eileen knew her father had once been to prison for beating her mother - yet even when her mother said so herself moments later, nobody bothered to correct the discrepancy. Truth and falsehood are not polarised in the Wards' house, they are interchangeable currencies, and no one seems to know or remember which they are using. Arguments are won on velocity of feeling, not veracity.

"Have you seen Shameless? On the telly?" two of the children asked. Shameless was a Channel 4 drama about a large working-class family on an east Manchester council estate. "We're just like Shameless," they laughed.

The tragedy for the Wards is that they are nothing like Shameless. To achieve social parity with C4's dysfunctional fictional family, the Wards would need to undergo upward mobility on a scale beyond their wildest dreams. But in the eyes of the law, they are shameless. They are defiant, fierce, unforgiving; incapable of remorse or reform. It is an impression their lives depend upon maintaining - but just once, for a brief moment, it cracked.

We wanted to photograph the family. Kathleen Ward was mortified. The state of the kids, the state of the house, the state of herself - "The shame!" she panicked. "Oh, the shame." For a long time, it seemed she would not allow it, but the depth of fear was masked in a flurry of laughter and fluster. Then, eventually, she agreed. She looked straight at the camera, and something changed. In her tired face, the horror of naked inadequacy was exposed.

Q&A: antisocial behaviour trailblazers

The government today announced its five-year plan to cut crime and antisocial behaviour. Among the proposals is the naming of new antisocial behaviour trailblazing areas. Alice Wilby explains the background

Monday July 19, 2004: Guardian

What are they?
Ten areas were given trailblazer status in 2003 as part of a government initiative to reduce antisocial behaviour. These areas receive increased funding and support from the government's Antisocial Behaviour Unit. The extra support was aimed at problems that affect communities, such as intimidating behaviour, nuisance neighbours and street begging.

Which areas were chosen?
The areas chosen were in cities with significant antisocial behaviour problems. These included London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. The scheme is to be expanded, with a further 40 areas expected to be given trailblazer status, and increased funding.

Why are they being expanded?
The areas are being expanded as part of the government's new five-year crime plan announced today. The government claims that the areas have been successful, with significant reductions in antisocial crimes in the trailblazer areas.

What are their targets?
The trailblazer areas aim to reduce nuisance behaviour by an increased use of antisocial behaviour orders (Asbos), and targeting children who are at risk of social exclusion. Antisocial behaviour orders are used to prevent an individual from travelling to certain areas or taking part in specific antisocial acts. More than 1,300 Asbos were issued between April 1999 and June 2003, however their use varies across the country. Trailblazer areas tend to issue more - Manchester has issued the most Asbos, 184 in three-and-a-half years.

Why are they necessary?
The government believes the trailblazer areas have had a significant impact on the level of crime in some of the most deprived communities. A Home Office survey showed that in a 24-hour period in 2003, there was a report of antisocial behaviour every two seconds.

What else is in the five-year crime plan?
The home secretary, David Blunkett, has pledged to cut crime by 15% within three years. In order to achieve this, the government has introduced a number of proposals including; increasing community involvement in tackling crime, using satellite tracking to check on the most prolific offenders, and providing more support for victims and witnesses in the justice system.

Misuse of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders
Keith Parkins, 05.07.2004 13:40 Indymedia

Are Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) being misused? They were originally introduced to clamp down on yobs, but there is growing evidence they are being used to clampdown on political dissent.

Mike Lane has recently written on the abuse of ASBOs. I have added to this by giving examples of an ASBO being served on Transco who had one of their buildings spray-painted by graffiti artists and community activist Peter Sandy being threatened with an ASBO in a crude attempt to prevent him fighting Pavilion Housing Association to force repairs.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/06/293482.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/06/294072.html

The latest issue of SchNEWS gives some more examples (SchNEWS issue 458 2 July 2004).

http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news461.htm

A couple of weeks ago, protesters arrived at Caterpillar’s offices in Solihull, to continue their demonstration against the company’s sale of bulldozers to Israel. ‘The Home Wrecker of The Year’ (SchNEWS 454) award for their contribution to Palestinian misery was again on offer and once again declined. Eight out of eleven protesters were nicked using ASBOs

For the past few years Dave Edwards has been campaigning in Rugby, against the council over issues like health and safety and corruption etc. Rugby Council got so fed with his protests they did what ever caring council does and tried to shut him up and slapped an Interim Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) on him. Dave then decided to camp outside the Town Hall and go on hunger strike. After a few days he was nicked under the Vagrancy Act but magistrates decided it was not in the public interest for the case to continue so Dave resumed his position on the council steps. A couple of weeks ago, Dave was again arrested and charged with breaching his interim ASBO by causing alarm and distress to an ex-councillor. Since then, he has been held on remand at Blakenhurst Prison in Redditch, where he remains on hunger strike. He would really appreciate letters of support to keep his spirits up. David Edwards LJ8405, HMP Blakenhurst, Hewell Lane, Redditch, Worcs. B97 6QS

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/07/294170.html
http://www.thevoiceofthepeople.org.uk

SchNEWS would like to hear from anyone else who is aware of the abuse of ASBOs. SchNEWS, PO Box 2600, Brighton, BN2 0EF, England tel/fax: +44 (0)1273 685913 email: schnews@brighton.co.uk

http://www.schnews.org.uk

The irony is that it is nigh impossible to get them served for their intended purpose (or was that just a cover), dealing with yobs, or when they are served, to get them enforced.

In Aldershot, yobs are making peoples lives a misery, especially in the town centre and on Pavilion estates. It has taken a lot of pushing by local campaigner Peter Sandy to get anything done. The Council claim there is not a problem. Pavilion have finally pulled their finger out and drawn up the necessary paperwork and helped collect the evidence. Now the Police are dragging their feet. Pavilion have recently applied to the courts to have ASBOs served on five yobs. The judge threw all five applications out as too harsh.

Anti-Social Behaviour Orders
Keith Parkins, 28.06.2004 16:35

Are Anti-Social Behaviour Orders being used to silence dissent?

Back in mid June, Mike Lane wrote that 'It was only a matter of time before council officers started to abuse the ASBO and harassment laws to oppress and silence working class tenants.' For which he then received a heap of childish abuse.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/06/293482.html

Mike Lane raised a very important issue.

So are Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) being inappropriately used? Even worse, are they being used to silence dissent? The answer to both questions, is a very definite yes.

In the Rotten Borough of Rushmoor, an ASBO has recently been served on Transco. What loutish behaviour have they been up to, what crime has been committed? In the case of Transco, it was that one of their buildings had been spray-painted with graffiti, and they had been ordered to clean up the building.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but was not the victim here Transco? If an ASBO was to be served, it was on the yobs carrying out the spray-painting. Although if we redefine the yobs as urban artists, then the criminals become the Rotten Borough of Rushmoor for destroying urban art.

If we are to serve ASBOs on corporate yobs, then let us start with KPI, a Kuwaiti-financed property company for destroying Farnborough town centre. A gang of yobs rioting for a week could not begin to wreak the havoc on the town that KPI and their friends in the council have done.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/06/292803.html

A local yob has been terrorising people on his estate and doing the same in Farnborough town centre. Eventually an ASBO was served, with a defined area in which the yob had to remain. He regularly breaks the order, even going so far as into Farnborough town centre and sticking two fingers up at the CCTV. Back before the magistrates, who should have automatically imposed a prison sentence, he got off. Sending the wrong message to other yobs.

In Aldershot, yobs are terrorising the sink estates. No action by the council, no action by the police, no action by the housing association that owns the estates. At night, Aldershot town centre becomes a no-go area.

A community warden is employed by the housing association. He does his best, but gets no back up by his employers, none from the police, none from the Council. He has had his face punched in, his car trashed. His employers have even refused to cover the cost of the damage to his car.

Peter Sandy is a community activist based in Aldershot. He has done much to make the streets safer, to force Pavilion Housing Association to carry out repairs. The response of Pavilion has been to call him a bully-boy (they later claimed they were mis-quoted by the press), have threatened him with eviction, threatened him with an ASBO (comparing him with a racist thug in Manchester), demanded that he appear before a tenants consultative committee for alleged breach of conduct.

None of these threats have materialised into action. He is not in breach of his tenancy agreement, Pavilion have no powers to issue ASBOs, the tenants consultative group has no jurisdiction over him.

In the recent local elections, Peter Sandy, standing as a LibDem, took a safe Labour seat. He took the LibDems from third place and forced a disgraced Tory councillor (deselected by the Tories from a safe Tory seat) into a humiliating third place.

The day after the election, Peter Sandy received another letter, demanding once again that he appear before the tenants consultative group. He called Pavilion. Oh a mistake they said, now that you are a councillor, and by the way, what are the repairs you would like us to carry out?

A week after the election, Peter Sandy received a threatening letter from Pavilion. Now that he was a councillor, they could of course use the Code of Conduct for Councillors, and seek to have him disqualified. They also wanted to see his tenants action group disbanded.

Peter Sandy has made it very clear he will not be intimidated, he will not be silenced, he will continue to act for the people who elected him. He has the full backing of the people who elected him.

He has called upon the Council chief executive and his party leader to give him their full backing. We eagerly await their response.

The additional comments by Mike Lane of dossiers being kept, false allegations being made etc, also ring true. Exactly the same has happened to Peter Sandy. Pavilion have made all sorts of malicious allegations, and yet everyone who deals with Peter Sandy, who seeks his help, have found him to be very courteous and fair minded. All he is asking, on behalf of people who seek his help, is that repairs are carried out.

January of this year, we had a meeting with Pavilion chief executive and one of their directors. We had been trying to arrange this meeting since last summer. We also invited along a couple of councillors from different parties. At first Pavilion huffed and puffed, that they could not have meeting without someone in the chair, that the meeting would get out of hand etc etc. Are you going to get out of hand, I asked, because we will not? Pavilion then sat down to discuss the issues we wished to raise on repairs, treatment of tenants etc. To their obvious surprise, we were able to have an amicable and constructive meeting. We got no straight answers, but that was to be expected, the repairs we raised have in the main not been carried out nor has their repair record or response time improved (they claim in their Annual Reports that repairs are carried out within ten days), and we are still waiting for a follow up meeting.

Mike and others have raised the treatment of people on benefits by low grade staff employed by housing associations and benefit offices. If people claiming benefits are routinely humiliated by staff employed to service their needs, we should not be surprised if they occasionally hit back.

These issues are regularly covered by Blackwater Valley Environmental Justice who produce a monthly, of late irregular, newsletter.

http://bvej.freewebsites.com
http://bvej.o-f.com

BANNED FOR LIFE FROM EVERY PUB IN BRITAIN

May 27 2004 The Mirror

By Richard Smith


A HUSBAND and wife yesterday became the first couple to be banned for life from every pub in Britain.

Robert Hughes, 37, and Lisa, 38, could be jailed if they are spotted drinking in ANY public place.

The ban, part of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, was imposed by magistrates in Pontypridd.

Hughes said later: "We can't even drink on the street outside our house. My wife also has a curfew and has to be indoors at 8.30pm."

Chief Insp Dave Dando, of South Wales Police, said: "We don't tolerate anti-social behaviour and this is a good way of fighting back.

"By drinking in a public place they are potentially breaching their order. That is a criminal matter and they could be arrested and sent to jail. I'd say anti-social behaviour is high on the agenda of communities everywhere in Britain.

"This law allows us to make people behave themselves."

Police used CS gas to break up a row at the couple's former home in Maerdy, South Wales, last August.

The couple - married for 16 years and with three children aged 21, 19 and 15, and three grandchildren - now live in Tylorstown three miles away.

Mrs Hughes admitted assaulting a police officer. Her husband admitted threatening behaviour.

Orders ban notorious gang from Town Centre

10 May 2004: MDC News

Four teenage gang members have been banned from going into Mansfield Town Centre after Mansfield District Council secured Interim Anti-Social Behaviour Orders against them.

They are the first ever to be banned from Mansfield Town Centre through the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders.

It is alleged that the four, known as the "Eastside Gang", have caused misery for shoppers, retailers and bus station users through their persistent bad behaviour.

It was claimed that their behaviour had included openly smoking cannabis in the Bus Station waiting room, harassment, abusive and threatening behaviour, street robbery, shop lifting and criminal damage.

The subjects of the Orders are a 13 year-old girl, a 15 year-old boy and two 17 year-old boys.

As well as excluding all of the gang from the Town Centre, the Orders prohibit them from taking part in solvent abuse, being present during 'drug deals', using Mansfield Bus Station, wearing clothing which hides their identity and associating with each other and other named individuals in public.

None of the gang can be named at this stage for legal reasons. However, their details will be circulated to Street Wardens, CCTV operators, Town Centre workers and retailers so that they can report any breach of the Interim Orders to the Police.

Any breach of the Orders may result in a custodial sentence of up to two years.

The Interim Orders will remain in place until the conclusion of full ASBO hearing, which have been scheduled for 17th June. The orders were secured following a joint initiative between the Council's Anti-Social Behaviour Team and the Police.

Tony Egginton, Executive Mayor of Mansfield District Council (pictured above) said: "The latest ASBOs represent an extension of our zero tolerance approach to anti-social behaviour from thugs who cause problems on our housing estates to thugs who cause problems in our Town Centre,"

"I have made tackling anti-social behaviour a leading priority of my four year plan for Mansfield and the benefits are already being felt on a number of housing areas in our District. I am confident that these latest orders will lead to the same benefit for people who use the bus station and shop in our town."

Inspector Dave Shardlow, Local Area Commander for Mansfield North said: "We have been aware of these issues for a number of weeks and have been pursuing proceedings through the criminal justice system."

"This takes time however and we alerted our colleagues at the Council's ASB team who have worked with us to help achieve a quicker relief of the situation using the Anti-Social Behaviour legislation."

"We will continue to work with the Council's ASB team in this way to bring about an improvement in the quality of life of Mansfield residents in other severe cases of Anti-Social Behaviour."

Mansfield District Council's Anti-Social Behaviour Team was formed in April 2003. In October 2003, the Executive Mayor of Mansfield District Council, Tony Egginton made cracking down on anti-social one of 12 leading priorities in his Four Year Plan.

Since its formation, the Anti-Social Behaviour Team has worked alongside its partners and local communities throughout the District to secure:

10 Anti-Social Behaviour Orders;

9 Injunctions;

57 Acceptable Behaviour Contracts

Court Orders Manchester Man – Behave, Even in Your Own Garden

Manchester CC: March 2004

In the first anti-social behaviour order of its kind in Manchester, 19-year-old Robert Alexiuk will risk a return to prison if he misbehaves in his front or back garden.

Alexiuk, serving a 15-month prison sentence for theft, now faces a five-year ASBO, obtained by Manchester City Council, when he is released.

The order bans him from using abusive, insulting or threatening language or behaviour in public, and includes private places such as the gardens at his home in Pitsford Road, Monsall.

He will also breach his order if he plays loud music at home or in a car and behaves in a way that interferes with the “peace, comfort or convenience” of others.

Alexiuk also risks prison if he associates outdoors with ten other named individuals, and this includes the gardens where his associates live. They are Lewis Cook, Darren Crolla, Daryl Keilly, Keren Dudson, Aaron Ainsley, Bradley Longshaw, John Lewis, Kevin Matthews, Carl Dove and Craig McCann.

A garden ban is also emphasised in the ASBO condition preventing Alexiuk from being in a group larger than three people in public. The order specifically mentions his own front garden. Alexiuk will only be able to be in a group of three if they include parents or siblings.

Evidence presented to Manchester magistrates court showed that Alexiuk has a list of convictions going back to 2001, including theft, being in possession of a stun gun without lawful authority, tampering with and stealing from vehicles, being found in possession of cannabis and damaging a cell while being held at Grey Mare Lane police station.

A community beat officer submitted evidence alleging that Alexiuk was part of a gang responsible for an increase in criminal activity in Monsall. Alexiuk and another man were arrested during a police operation to combat the criminal activity.

The rest of Alexiuk’s order, which applies to the whole of England and Wales, prevents him from engaging in conduct which stops the free passage of people in public or where the public has access; entering or attempting to enter any secured vehicle unless it is his own or he has permission; carrying any article made or adapted as a weapon; carrying fireworks; and driving any vehicle without the owner’s permission or without a driving licence, insurance, tax and MOT certificates. He is also banned from being carried in a vehicle or on a motorbike unless it is a private vehicle where the driver is qualified and legally documented, or a taxi, police vehicle, or in connection with health, welfare, social or leisure services.

The order specifies that he must not drive any vehicle, including a motorbike, in a way that would cause alarm or distress to residents or other road users.

He is also banned from four areas of Manchester: St. Augustine Street in Collyhurst; an area bounded by the inner edges of Bower Street, Grimshaw Lane, Briscoe Lane and Ten Acre Lane; Mill Lane, Oldham Road and Reliance Street, and Rothwell Street, Peel Street and the Rochdale Canal, all in Newton Heath.

“Alexiuk has been a menace to what is a peaceful and tight-knit community and this order gives him a simple choice – behave or risk going back to prison,” said the Executive Member for Housing on Manchester City Council, Councillor Basil Curley.

“His order is designed to make sure that Alexiuk cannot find easy ways around it by, for example, acting anti-socially in his own gardens or those of his associates.”

City terrorised by teenage girl

BBC Newsround
17.2.04

A 13-year-old girl has been banned from going into Leeds city centre for causing trouble and leading a gang.
Ellen Moore was given an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) that also stops her going on buses on her own, and covering her face with a scarf or hood.

She is reported to be the leader of a gang of kids called the Leeds Town Crew who caused lots of trouble there.

If Ellen does any of the things the Asbo bans her from she could end up being locked away.

Click here to find out more about anti-social behaviour orders
Around half the members of the Leeds Town Crew - including Ellen's older sister Phillipa - have been given Asbos.

Keith Wakefield, leader of Leeds City Council, said: "This is further proof of our determination to break up gangs who cause trouble on Leeds estates."

He added that the council would carry on trying to get other trouble makers banned too.

Bailiffs are here and I'm at the end of my tether

In the first of a Guardian series following the experiences of a family removed from their home for anti-social behaviour, Gerard Seenan reports on the day of eviction

Tuesday November 18, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

Jackie Annable is waiting for the bailiffs. In less than an hour, she and her 15-year-old son, Shane, will be homeless. Everything portable is lying in the backyard. There's not much: a few bin bags overspill with clothes, some crockery, family photographs in careless bundles. Anything larger remains in the house. Ms Annable, 38, and Shane have nowhere to go; nowhere to take their things.

She had known for months, of course, that this day would come. The letters from the council, the court appearances. It was an inexorable process, but she never thought it would come to this - she imagined there would be somewhere, anywhere, to go.

This is the reality of political rhetoric: a wet Monday morning in Nottinghamshire and Ms Annable and her son are homeless because of Shane's anti-social behaviour. They are the human face of anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), the government's flagship policy for dealing with unruly young people and bad tenants.
Last month, a few hundred miles away from Ms Annable and Shane in Westminster, the prime minister gave an impassioned speech calling for local authorities to make more use of Asbos. In 2002 there were 2,246 evictions clearly attributed to Asbos. For the government, it is not enough, it wants councils to evict many more anti-social tenants and anti-social children.

Tony Blair and the home secretary, David Blunkett, have made this the cornerstone of their social policy. But homelessness charities are critical. To them, Asbos are a futile exercise, a way of merely kicking the problem around the country without offering any solutions. "Politicians have been so keen to emphasise enforcement, they have just ignored the root causes of the problem. Evictions don't solve anti-social behaviour," says Adam Sampson, director of Shelter.

The Annables are among the first tenants to be evicted since the prime minister's speech. In a unique project, the Guardian will be following them, getting to the heart of the reality of the political arguments, to discover how Asbos work in real life.

Shattered

We begin yesterday morning, when Ms Annable's hope was shattered. Shane knew he and his mother were to be evicted at 11.30. He went to school as usual, believing he had a house to go to in Nottingham that night. Then, after he had gone, the postman came. He brought a letter from the local authority: the house it had planned to transfer them to was still occupied.

The home they were forced to leave yesterday was not much of a house: a two-up, two-down terrace in an old miners' row in Eastwood. Curling linoleum on the floor, pistachio green framing the ageing gas fire on the wall. But it was, at least, close to Ms Annable's family, who have lived in Eastwood for five generations. She was born a few doors down; her sister, brother and dad still live there. But she has been forced out because the neighbours, and the council, have had enough of Shane's behaviour.

Lighting fires, smashing windows, picking on other kids, being rowdy late at night: Ms Annable lists all her son's ills. He has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), diagnosed when he was six. It is the cause, she says, but she is not making any excuses. "If the boot was on the other foot, I wouldn't want him on my street," she says.
It is about an hour until the eviction. Her support worker makes phone call after phone call, desperately banging the buttons. There's no way of halting the repossession, but maybe he can find them somewhere to stay. The hostels, though, are full. Private landlords want references. Time ticks away.

Then her sister Denise says she can take her; she can share a bed with her youngest girl. But she won't take Shane. There's no room and if Shane causes trouble, her tenancy will be in jeopardy too.
The knock at the door finally comes. Ms Annable visibly steels herself. The bailiffs are there, the police too. She leaves, but then runs back inside. "Just give her a minute," says the support worker as the joiner checks the lock. From the street, you can hear her sobs.

She hands over the key and, laden with all she can carry, she walks to her sister's. Her sofas, fridge and washing machine are left locked up behind. The support worker telephones social services. He says Shane is officially homeless and they must take care of him. "I don't want to lose him, don't let them take him," says his mother.
But social services will not take Shane. They say he is still his mother's responsibility. It's just after lunch time, a few hours until Shane comes home from school - to nothing.

Ms Annable says it was easier to control Shane when he was a kid, but he's 15 now and she cannot cope. She suffers from depression, has been in and out of hospital. "He takes no notice whatever," she says. "I try to speak to Shane about how he's got to behave and he just tells me to shut up. But maybe I'm to blame, maybe I've let him get away with murder."

Shane has always been a handful, but in March, things came to a head. He and his friends had been smashing windows in the street. They were a gang, really, and fought with other gangs. "The little buggers turn this place into a ghetto," says a neighbour.

The local terraced streets do not have the best reputation. Brown town, they call it, because of the heroin. On the main street, windows are boarded up. Round the back, sinks and other junk lie in overgrown gardens. But a bit of community spirit remains. Some people like living there; Ms Annable was one. A handful have bought their homes from the council, tried to make the place a bit better. Other residents were not prepared to put up with the behaviour of Shane and his friends. "They are out at three in the morning, shouting all sorts," says another neighbour. Police were called and that was when the council was drawn in.

It is Shane's, not his mother's, behaviour that is the problem, but her name was on the tenancy so she signed the acceptable behaviour contract. Shane had to behave or they would lose their house.

Threat

But threat of eviction had no effect on Shane. When he was out late at night, Ms Annable knew he was up to no good. So she went looking for him. "I was out at four in the morning looking for him and I got a brick chucked at me by one of his mates." Shane will not take his Ritalin; his temper is short.

Then the letter came saying she had to go to court for a repossession hearing. "As soon as I got the letter, I started packing things in bags." She put aside a little money each week from her benefits to pay the deposit on a flat. She went to look at houses. "I went to see private landlords, but they all wanted too much bond money." She went to the county court on September 2. "When I got there the barrister and solicitor said, Could you chuck Shane out? Shut the door and save this place." The barrister wanted her to put Shane in a centre where his ADHD would be addressed. But she had been in a residential school and did not want her child to experience that. "And I thought if they took Shane away, I'd never get him back."

That morning, there was a reprieve. The court ruled, on a technicality, that she could not be evicted. Instead, it issued a suspended order: if Shane behaved, they could keep their house. That afternoon, the council says, Shane broke a window. Shane denied this, but eviction had become inevitable. "When I spoke to Shane about it, he said, 'I don't care, I'll get somewhere to live.' I love him but I have got to the end of my tether."

At another hearing, she was told her house was being repossessed. By then, she had agreed to put Shane in a residential place. But the council said there was no money to fund it. Last night, she sat in her sister's home, almost frantic. When Shane finds out he has nowhere to live, "he'll go mental," she says. "But there's nowhere for us to go, we've tried everything."

Comment: this article highlights so much that it is wrong with ASBOs. From what is reported above, there has been a substantial failure on the part of the 'system' to meet this families needs. A young person with high support needs, a local authority without the resources to meet those needs, and at the end of it a family becomes homeless.

At some point, the young person may drift in to the network of sofa-surfing, street homelessness and hostels. And then Louise Casey and the others at the Antisocial Behaviour unit can sit back proud that they have perfected the whole network of revolving doors.

'The law is a blunt instrument'

Blair's policies are welcomed, though with reservations

Thursday October 16, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

Daily Mail Editorial, October 15
"Despite yesterday's fanfare, [Tony Blair] had little new to say. There is no more money for his anti-yob crusade ... Instead he urged police, courts and councils to use powers they already have to deal with hooliganism. Amen to that. A pity he didn't acknowledge that those powers are drafted so bureaucratically that they are virtually impossible to apply. The doubts don't end there ... Louts, beggars and vandals don't develop in a vacuum. They are overwhelmingly the product of the collapse in traditional values, family breakdown, a lack of discipline at home and in school ... Mr Blair is right to speak of the need to rebuild 'cohesive communities'. The tragedy is that his own policies have done more than anything else to destroy them."

Sun Editorial, October 15
"Antisocial behaviour orders (Asbos) will only work if they are backed up with a very big stick ... Too many people in authority have been brainwashed by the politically correct claptrap that children lose self-esteem if they are punished. Those youngsters have grown up into parents who don't know how to discipline their own children. If those who defile our way of life knew they would be locked up for five years, they would soon mend their ways. We should be building more jails for the serious and serial offenders. And setting up tough work camps for young yobs like those that work so well in America. Slapping their wrists gets nowhere."

Gerry Hassan Herald, Scotland, October 15
"It is very easy to stigmatise and stereotype young people. They are easy targets for politicians looking for a quick headline. And in an increasingly complex, changing world, politicians, despite often using the right buzz words, are often the last to change. Instead, people such as [the Scottish first minister] Jack McConnell and [the home secretary] David Blunkett hold on to a morally authoritarian agenda shaped by a sense of certainty that seems to hark back to some mythical golden age.

"However, our young people are worth more than that. Scots youth groups provide a valuable service - allowing young people to develop social skills, self-esteem, and self-confidence, interact with other young people in a way different from school and with adults, while often engaging in socially worthwhile work. It is worthy and the sort of thing you'd think New Labour might champion."

Theodore Dalrymple Daily Telegraph, October 15
"Anti-social behaviour is almost the only field in which Britain leads the world, and is what the British are now principally known (and despised) for, everywhere they go ... The plain fact is that a large proportion of British people do not socialise when they get together; they antisocialise. They cannot enjoy themselves without making a nuisance of themselves, without screaming, drinking to excess and creating an atmosphere of menace ...
"The government's proposals to deal with the problem are, as one would expect, weak and feeble ... It is most unfortunate that repression is now the only means by which anti-social behaviour can be reduced in Britain. The law is a blunt instrument, and it would be much better if people were socialised into behaving with reasonable consideration for others in the first place, rather than coerced into it by an already over-mighty state."

Daily Star Editorial, October 15
"Mr Blunkett gets our full support ... He was right to begin his crusade with a sideswipe at those who will put it into effect. He warned that officials who fail to tackle anti-social behaviour will be sacked. Too right! We must get rid of the slackers in our town halls and police HQs."

Comment: err, don't we VOTE for these officials or is Blunkett accruing still more power to his Control Bunker?

Independent Editorial, October 15
"Crime and anti-social behaviour stem largely - but not exclusively - from economic blight. In that context it may accurately, if strangely, be said that Gordon Brown's successful macroeconomic policies and imaginative schemes ... have done far more to get disruptive youths off the streets and crime down than any number of Jack Straw or Mr Blunkett's eye-catching initiatives. Improvements in educational standards and opportunities could do the rest ...
"Jobs, education and a decent built environment are thus part of the answer, but Mr Blair is right to identify the problem that many people complain about the failure of enforcement ... Delivering good policing isn't as eye-catching as Asbos or compulsory parenting orders, but it may just help."

Daily Mirror Editorial, October 15
"The measures ... are an important step forward. If they are properly enforced. He wants the police to crack down hard - and so does the public. But we cannot expect the police to do it all. The growth in yobbish behaviour has a number of causes, including the failure of parents to instill discipline ...
"Mr Blunkett threatened teachers who did not control young people in their care. That is grossly unfair. Teachers suffer more than most from the lout culture. Everyone has a responsibility to drag young yobs into a civilised way of life. But it has to start in the home."

Estate where orders don't always work

Helen Carter
Wednesday October 15, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

Nestled in the shadow of Manchester airport and just off the M56, the Wythenshawe estate is among the most deprived communities in the UK.

In the last three-and-a-half years, 35 antisocial behaviour orders (Asbos) have been imposed, mostly against young people. Manchester has the highest number of orders in the UK, with 184 orders brought against 140 individuals in the same period.

The city has been provided with £600,000 funding over three years to work with 150 families as part of its status as a trailblazer area.

But not all the residents of the Willow Park area of the estate share the view that the orders are a panacea.
Young teenagers wearing baseball caps, tracksuits and hooded tops hang around outside a newsagent's shop in a small group. As a police officer approaches, they slink away.

A passing funeral cortege snakes its way along the road as several of the mourners, wearing dark sunglasses, enthusiastically give v-signs to the police, who ignore them.

William Coughlin, 18, who lives on the estate, is firmly opposed to antisocial behaviour orders. "I think they are bang out of order," he said. "There are others ways of punishing people - community service or maybe tagging. I think it is a bit harsh.

"My mates have been locked up and everything and we have had leaflets come through the door with my mates' faces on it. It is humiliating for them."

Superintendent Gerry McGowan, of Greater Manchester police, said 75% of cases never result in an order being instituted.

"We get about 12 reports to us every week about breaches and they are predominantly attributed to one individual," he said. "At the present time we have a number of Asbos and the great majority are against juveniles.

"It is not a draconian measure which breaches the rights of individuals; we don't go out and seek to recruit people. People come to us with issues and we deal with them. It is a seven-stage process and Asbos are a last resort.

"Wythenshawe is a place which feels an awful lot better than it did a number of years ago.
On this estate there has been a reduction of 30% over two years of reports of youth nuisance."

Councillor Basil Curley, Manchester city council's executive member for housing, said: "The high number of Asbos is absolutely a sign of success. The expectation of people in the city is to demand a good quality of life and they are also very much aware of the new laws and they want us to use them."

Next year, a Family Support Unit is being set up in Manchester, the second in the UK, where five problem families will live and be given intensive support.

Bharat Patel, proprietor of Amba's newsagents, said: "There has been a little bit of change, but the teenagers still hang around the shop stopping other customers coming in. I tell them to move on, but just get a lot of abuse back.
"People with Asbos are still out around here - they don't care. It has got a little bit better since the cameras went up."

A taxi driver, who did not want to be named, pointed to a large deep scratch down the side of his car.
"Asbos don't work," he said bluntly. "There is a family near me who are nuisance neighbours. They rob cars, smash your windows and they have scratched my car with a key. They took my taxi computer out and have attacked dozens of other cars. They throw wild apples at your windows and cars and they set fire to things. The youngest is four years old and the oldest is in his late teens."

Blair pledges to extend antisocial behaviour measures

Simon Jeffery and agencies
Tuesday October 14, 2003

The prime minister, Tony Blair, today promised fresh legislation to tackle antisocial behaviour if the rolling out of a series of new initiatives at the beginning of next year fails to bring an improvement.
Shortly after the home secretary, David Blunkett, revealed plans to tackle begging, nuisance neighbours and abandoned cars, Mr Blair said that fixed penalty notices for drunkeness and motoring offences were to be extended nationwide.

"It's not acceptable for these powers to be used in some parts of the country and not others. Loutish behaviour is loutish behaviour wherever it is. And it should be dealt with in the same way wherever it happens," he told an anti-social behaviour symposium in London.
"So if, even after this legislation, more powers are needed, we will go further and get you them."

The meeting had previously heard Mr Blunkett denounce "garbage from the 60s and 70s" as he outlined how neighbours who spoil the lives of other people in their communities could be relocated, sent to parenting classes or issued with fixed penalty notices.

"There is no point in this garbage from the '60s and '70s about being non-judgmental. You can't be non-judgmental when you are living next door to the family from hell," he told the meeting.

Nuisance families will be targeted in four pilot areas - Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Sunderland - which will aim to draw up the best techniques for tackling them.

Beggars in Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, Westminster and Camden, north London, will similarly be targeted, and the Home Office will set up "trailblazer" projects to tackle abandoned vehicles in London and Liverpool.

A national database will be set up to identify graffiti writers by their tag - the nickname or pseudonym they use - and 12 areas in England and Wales will pilot new powers in the antisocial behaviour bill. Currently before parliament, it will force the owners of telephone boxes and other street furniture to clear up graffiti.

Mr Blunkett said council workers and others who fail to take on antisocial behaviour should face the consequences. "I have got a message for those right across the country who think they are big enough to take on not me but the communities they serve."

The prime minister's speech touched less on specific policy than individual responsibility and concepts of respect for all but set out a vision of strong communities empowered by criminal justice legislation.

He said his experiences of living in "inner-city" London before he relocated to Downing Street had sharpened his awareness of the impact that antisocial behaviour had on communities and it had now got the to point where the government had to act.

"I have made many visits over the last year up and down the country, and on each occasion antisocial behaviour has been the issue raised by people. I listen to their stories. The same things come up time and again. A tiny number of people on an estate of hundreds making people's lives a misery: shouted insults in the street, graffiti daubed on the front door, fireworks used as weapons, abandoned cars left in the streets."
"Only by rebuilding cohesive communities and reforming the system to bear down harder on antisocial behaviour can we achieve our vision of a strong and fair society. That is why reforms to restore civic responsibility are not a threat to social justice, but essential for its realisation in a modern society."

Mr Blair urged police and local councils to make greater use of their powers to curb antisocial behaviour and, at one point, urged shopkeepers to voluntarily implement regulations yet to come into force on firework sales.

"I want to make one very simple point in this speech. To the police, housing officers, local authorities - we've listened, we've given you the powers, and it's time to use them."

Parents cry foul as 'anti-social' teenagers are named and shamed

Martin Bright, home affairs editor
Sunday October 12, 2003
The Observer <http://www.observer.co.uk>

At first glance, the leaflet looked much like any other junk mail: a credit card offer perhaps, a new takeaway or advert for double glazing. But when residents in Neasden in north-west London took a closer look at the literature that arrived on their doormats they realised this was something quite different.

In a unique experiment, seven local youths, the youngest just 15, were named and shamed in the leaflet as members of a gang that had been terrorising the neighbourhood. In the first mass Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) in Britain, all seven were banned from the streets in the Chalkhill area of Neasden, where they were said to have waged a campaign of harassment for two years.

'The Anti-Social Behaviour of these individuals has caused misery for residents in the Neasden and Chalkhill Area' said the leaflet. ' TOGETHER THEY HAVE BEEN CONVICTED OF OVER 100 OFFENCES' .
The names and photographs of all seven were printed, along with a map outlining the areas from which they were excluded.

In a dramatic attempt to cut crime in the London borough of Brent, the glossy, full-colour leaflets were distributed to every house in the exclusion zone, inviting residents to call the police, a local council helpline or Crimestoppers if the young men were seen in the area. The leaflets explained that the drastic ban had been put in place for at least five years and any breach invited an immediate prison sentence. They were also banned from 'acting anti-socially' anywhere in England and Wales.

According to the leaflet, the group had used foul and abusive language, committed theft, burglary and street robbery, regularly possessed drugs and knives and urinated outside residents' doors. More enigmatically, they were accused of 'plunging elderly residents into darkness'.

According to the police and local press reports, the so-called Press Road Crew had shown no remorse in court, when the orders were imposed last month and two gang members had threatened the judge and counsel for the police with retribution.

One resident surprised by the leaflet was Carol, mother of 16-year-old William Marshall, who was among those named and shamed.

'The first I knew about the leaflet was when it came through the letterbox and my three-year-old daughter brought it to me. She was kissing the leaflet and telling me she had found a picture of William. I think the whole thing is outrageous. I've never seen anything like it.'

Carol and other parents of the seven are mounting a legal challenge under the Human Rights Act to have the leaflet withdrawn, along with laminated posters in local pubs. They claim that their right to privacy and family life have been infringed by the leaflets, which have made the gang outcasts in their community.

'It was all based on hearsay evidence and they picked on these kids because they had already been in trouble and knew they had records,' said Martina, mother of 18-year-old Martin Kelly, who she claimed had been stopped and searched 39 times by police in a campaign of harassment. 'Our families have been destroyed by this.'

If successful, the challenge could stop Anti-Social Behaviour Orders in their tracks; they already cost around £5,000 each to set up, and few councils would be prepared to foot the cost of lengthy appeals.

But most people in Neasden who spoke to The Observer had little sympathy for the group. Police figures show that crime has fallen by 25 per cent in the exclusion zone since the ASBOs were issued. Residents in the vicinity of Brill House - a run-down, low-rise block on the edge of a dual carriageway which had been the focus of the youths' activities - said their lives had become bearable since the leaflets were issued.

One elderly woman living alone with her dog said previous attempts to control the boys by closing off alleyways with iron gates had failed and the radical measure had made a huge difference to her life. 'At least they are off the streets now. All we want to do is live in peace and not be disturbed at night,' she said, although she added that she was scared they might return in disguise.

No residents were prepared to be named, but one disabled woman said she recognised two boys in the leaflet as part of the group who frightened her so much she was scared to leave her house, even to sit in the garden. Graffiti covered one side of her house and security lights installed by the council had been smashed.

She felt it was perfectly reasonable to publish the names of the offenders and even thought that the ASBO did not go far enough: 'I'm fed up with do-gooders. These people should be locked up. The people who live here are terrorised. They are afraid to call the police. This is no way to live.'

But one 29-year-old man said the leaflet would just make matters worse: 'They are wannabe gangsters, who go around instilling fear into others.
'The money put into this could have been spent on something more positive.'

Brent council and local police are already enthusiastic converts to ASBOs after the naming of the seven. 'Frankly, this was an extreme case and the leaflet presses all the buttons,' said Colin Moone, assistant director of housing. 'But in the end we had persistent complaints about bad behaviour over at least 18 months. The abuse of police and residents had made it a no-go area.'

Police Inspector Nicola Dale, who instituted the legal action against the group, who originally numbered 18, said that she had no regrets.

'This is as much about reassuring the community that something is being done as anything else. The victims were mainly old people who were frightened even to put a hanging basket outside their flats.'

ASBOs were introduced in April 1999 in what was hailed as a 'zero tolerance' policy by the Government which would shift 'power back to the law-abiding'.

Just over 1,100 have been granted by the courts, but their use has been patchy. Only two have been applied for in Essex and one in Wiltshire, while Greater Manchester courts have granted 184.

Brent council officers said they had been inspired by the example of Manchester, the ASBO capital of Britain, where more than 150,000 name-and-shame leaflets have been distributed.

'We know it is controversial, but are proud to be the leaders on the enforcement of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders in this country,' said Dave Hume, a spokesman for Manchester City Council. 'And our strategy very much includes the naming of juveniles. The leaflets go out specifically to people living in the area affected. It gives people the message that we have taken action on their behalf.'

But children's organisations are concerned that the increased severity of ASBOs are part of a general crackdown on children.

Anti-social behaviour legislation going through Parliament will extend the power to name and shame juveniles to criminal as well as civil cases. At the same time, new laws will stop groups of three or more gathering in public if seen as a nuisance by the public, and give the police powers to escort children home if they are out unaccompanied after 9pm.

Sharon Moone, a policy officer for The Children's Society, said: 'There is a strong risk that this kind of strategy will have a negative impact. These young people need to be engaged with the community, not antagonised and alienated still further.'

Meanwhile, in Brent there has been at least one worrying consequence of the naming strategy. There have been alleged vigilante attacks on the boys, including one in which local gangsters said that they would put the seven 'six feet under' if they stepped out of line.

In a final irony, just days after the leaflets were posted, Martina Burke received a letter from Victim Support, expressing concern that her son had been the victim of a crime and inviting her to call a helpline if she needed to talk to someone about crime in her area.

· Additional reporting by Karin Gavelin

Comment: It is really alarming that this measure is being so widely and routinely used and with so little comment or criticism. There has been no research to demonstrate that the measure is evidence based, nor any consideration regarding the safety of the children involved. Surely printing names and photos and highlighting involvement in drugs or other behaviour could put children at risk. Vigilante attacks, recruitment into other offending behaviour, inverted status symbols, labelling of innocent parties: none of this has been adequately discussed, yet Manchester has distributed in excess of 150,000 of these pieces of paper.

If the situation were reversed, and a local councillor was accused on hearsay of unproved charges, imagine the storm if 150,00 leaflets were letter-boxed. The people who are on the receiving end of this treatment are also the people who have the least recourse. The sooner that one of these back-fires, the sooner it will be abandoned. Lets just hope that the 'backfire' is not the killing of a young person by vigilantes taking the Government's Anti-social behaviour tactics to their logical conclusion.

Families angry as council takes on young 'dealers'

David Ward
Wednesday September 10, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

The three mothers were furious. Their four sons, aged 13 to 17, had picked up four of the 66 anti-social behaviour orders issued to residents of the Little London area of Leeds in a crackdown on drugs.

"It's all lies," said one, who did not wish to be named, as a vanload of police took a coffee break 30 yards across Blackman Lane. "Our kids are doing nothing. They have not got the big guys who are doing the drugs so they have gone for the little kids."

She claimed one order - or Asbo - had been served by being thrown into her front garden. "It's still there," she said.
Leeds city council has been granted the orders - the largest number issued in one go since the system began in April 1999 - against alleged dealers, addicts and pimps. The youngest boy named is 10.

The Home Office met the legal costs and paid for the extra police time involved. Yesterday the home secretary, David Blunkett, claimed the Asbos would make Leeds a safer city.

The mothers were not convinced. They explained that their sons used to gather, like many in the area, on the wall outside All Souls church. But they cannot meet there again until December- and possibly not until 2005.
Cheryl Lawson produced the order given to her 14-year-old son: it is a ring file with 20 pages containing allegations against all 65 recipients. She got an identical file herself.

A map in the file shows an area marked in red in which he must not be seen. A blue line shows the only route he can use to leave home to reach nearby Meanwood Road. And as he walks he must not wear a hooded top or a baseball cap.

"They seem to be able to say what they want," added Ms Lawson. "It's like house arrest. If the boys have done half the things listed in that file, why have they not been arrested?"

"We are not saying our kids do not do wrong," said Jacqueline Buchanan, whose 13-year-old son has received an order. "But where is the evidence?"

The file says of one boy: "You were seen on Blackman Lane and subsequently searched. You were found in possession of a red broom handle, the carrying of which caused harassment, alarm and distress."

Another youth is described as running the drugs round in one area. "He has a large number of males dealing for him and has taken to issuing them with walkie talkie radios."

A third is alleged to have links with local dealers and is suspected of "a number of large-scale armed robberies. He is seen as a 'hard man' ... He is always aggressive towards the police and is a large physical presence, which he used to threaten and intimidate."

Mr Blunkett called the Asbos "an important tool in our fight against criminals and yobs".

The leader of Leeds city council, Keith Wakefield, said up to 12 dealers were operating in the area at any one time and often employed young children to act as look-outs.

"For too long the Blackman Lane area has been plagued by drug dealers and users, who are ruining the lives of local people. My message is simple: this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated and to those who refuse to play a civilised part in society, then your time is up."

Comment: If the allegations made by the Local Authority are true, then they would have a statutory obligation to take steps to address this via the Children's Act. If they haven't done this, the question seriously needs to be asked why not. A child with that level of involvement in drugs and older people supplying would need to be assessed to see if they were at risk.

Nuisance neighbours, beggars, and graffiti taggers targeted in action plan

Alan Travis
Wednesday October 15, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

· Nuisance neighbours
450 families and households in Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, and Sunderland who indulge in "persistent and serious anti-social behaviour" to be targeted by March 2005 with intervention and, where necessary, sanctions.
Nuisance neighbourhood panels to be set up, including experts from local authorities, police and voluntary sector, to nominate nuisance households and ensure solutions are found for the most difficult families. Parenting programmes for families of children most at risk of committing anti-social behaviour.
· Begging
Surveys show 65% of public resent being approached by beggars and half won't go near a cashpoint if someone is begging nearby. There will be help and support in 30 areas where criminal justice intervention programmes exist and aim to tackle begging and other "street culture" problems. Help will include drug and alcohol treatment, better use of enforcement, and "alternative giving" schemes for the public. Begging to be made a recordable offence so treatment rather than a fine can be ordered by courts. "Trailblazers" in Brighton, Bristol, Leeds, Camden, and Westminster will pick up and fingerprint beggars and persistent offenders given court-ordered treatment. Targets to be set to reduce begging in these areas.
· Environmental crime
Operation Scrap-it: from October 2004 abandoned or untaxed cars in London and Liverpool will be removed within 72 hours.
Operation Gate-it: a fund for communities to tackle crime and grime in alleyways by putting up gates, cleaning the area or improving lighting.
Operation Scrub-it: graffiti is to be treated as criminal damage that makes people feel unsafe.
A "shop 'em and stop 'em" project to be set up with British Transport Police and Crimestoppers which will include a national database of graffiti "tags" so that prosecutions can take into account the full extent of damage caused. Will also include a national poster campaign targeting the most prolific graffiti "taggers" to encourage information leading to conviction.
Pilot schemes in 12 areas next year so that local authorities can issue clean-up notices to owners of street furniture, including phone boxes, and to bill those companies and utilities that fail to act.
Ten council estates are to be targeted for a "100 days clean-up" campaign which will remove abandon cars, deal with graffiti and other nuisances with enforcement action against those who are causing the problems.
· Improving the response
An action line, website and an academy are to be set up from early next year to provide advice and assistance to local authority officers, the police and others tackling anti-social behaviour.
£22m over the next two years is to be spent in England and Wales to "pump-prime" implementation of the action plan. A team in the Crown Prosecution Service will specialise in anti-social behaviour cases and new sentencing guidelines are to be issued to magistrates.

Curfew plan faces court challenge

Alan Travis
Monday October 13, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

A government drive against low-level crime and anti-social behaviour to be showcased by Tony Blair tomorrow is at risk of facing a human rights challenge in the high court.

A legal opinion from Matrix Chambers, the human rights experts, says that part of the crackdown is "nothing short of a nationwide curfew on young people under 16" which breaches four articles of human rights legislation.

The child curfews are part of "an anti-social behaviour action plan" to be launched by Mr Blair and the home secretary, David Blunkett, tomorrow, based on measures expected to reach the statute book in January.

The legal opinion from Anthony Jennings QC of Matrix Chambers, questioning whether the crackdown complies with human rights legislation, was obtained by an alliance of children's charities including the Children's Society and Barnardo's, and Nacro, the crime reduction charity.

Mr Jennings singles out clause 29 of the anti-social behaviour bill for particular criticism, saying it contains "some breathtaking provisions". ~The clause gives a police officer the power to disperse groups of teenagers on the
streets and impose a blanket curfew on them for up to six months.

The launch of the campaign by Mr Blair is designed to persuade local authorities and the police not to hesitate to use the powers in the anti-social behaviour bill going through the House of Lords.

Mr Blair will urge them to use £40-£200 fixed penalty notices for intimidating behaviour, noise nuisance and graffiti, and compulsory parenting classes.

Begging protester dies

Guardian: 18.11.03

Leonard Hockey, who petitioned Buckingham Palace after he was banned from begging in Manchester, has died in prison custody. Mr Hockey, from Salford, had been transferred to Manchester Royal Infirmary several days before he died last week at the age of 51.

Tributes paid to beggar at centre of test case

Jo Pearce
Tuesday November 18, 2003

Campaigners have been paying tribute to the beggar at the centre of a legal row whose death was announced today.
Leonard Hockey, 52, who died last Thursday, had been the subject of a civil injunction - awarded to Manchester city council - banning him from begging in part of the city centre for two years.

It is understood that he had been in hospital for more than two weeks suffering from a range of complaints including malnutrition, hepatitis and pneumonia. He had recently been jailed for failing to attend a meeting as part of a drug treatment order imposed by the courts.

Mr Hockey, who had a £22,000 a year a heroin and crack habit, had been arrested 97 times for begging in Manchester before the injunction was imposed in September, but was known as a non-aggressive beggar. Begging is illegal but does not carry a prison sentence.

His solicitors had been preparing to appeal the order early next year. Ben Taylor of Glaisyers, Mr Hockey's solicitors, said: "He was a man more sinned against than sinning. He was trying hard to get off drugs and he didn't deserve to be banned from begging in Manchester because, on the council's evidence, he was not aggressive. He was ill before he went into prison and he got even worse inside.

"His case raises some interesting and important legal questions. Is it appropriate to use the civil courts to seek a sanction that comes with a much more severe penalty than the criminal courts could impose?"

Leonard Hockey, who used to be a vendor of the Manchester-based Big Issue in the North magazine, was a well-known figure in Manchester. Kate Markey, executive director of The Big Issue in the North, said: "Everyone at the Big Issue in the North is extremely sorry to hear of the death of Leonard Hockey. His death reiterates how vulnerable people on the streets are and how damaging being homeless is to people's health."

Manchester council, which sought the injunction against Mr Hockey, is known for taking a tough stance on begging. Earlier this month it placed an anti-social behaviour order on another beggar, banning him from begging in the city centre. The council expressed its condolences to Mr Hockey's family but remained unrepentant about his treatment.

Basil Curley, the council's executive member for housing, said: "Our commiserations go to Mr Hockey's friends and family at this sad time. Our contact with him was obviously not in the happiest of circumstances and his lifestyle would not have been conducive to good health. Help and support had been offered to him. Sometimes people prefer to follow their own path."

Gordon McKinnon, Manchester's city centre manager, added: "I'm sorry to hear of his death. We would wish well to Mr Hockey and to anybody else in his situation. The situation in Manchester city centre in relation to aggressive begging remains the same. We have a desire to ensure that people who feel the need to beg would take advantage of the assistance which is offered to them."

Beggar protests over ban at Buckingham palace

Helen Carter
Saturday September 13, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

A beggar who was banned from asking for spare change in Manchester city centre has taken up residence outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.

Leonard Hockey, a 51-year-old heroin addict, was the first person to have an injunction taken out against him to prevent him begging in Manchester.

He has now begun a protest outside the palace and has tried to send a letter to the Queen. Mr Hockey's solicitor, Ben Taylor, has already lodged an appeal against last month's county court ruling.

Friends of the beggar - who has a £22,000-a-year drug addiction - say he went to the capital on a matter of principle. He is also said to be planning a begging tour of the country.

One of his friends said: "He doesn't do anyone any harm and he doesn't go out stealing, yet the council have spent thousands taking him to court.

"What they should have done instead was spend a fraction of that getting him on a detox programme, it would have been a lot cheaper. All he wants is to sort himself out and live in peace."
Mr Hockey has been arrested 97 times for begging. He faces up to two years in jail if he is caught again in the city centre. The injunction will run for two years.

Comment: Mr. Hockey's sad death should be a lesson to those who promote ASBOs as a life-saving measure and begging as funding a contribution to their death. Arrested and banged up. Away from friends and familiar places, Mr. Hockey dies in hospital. But at least the happy shoppers of Manchester won't be bothered while they extend their credit on the run up to Christmas. So hopefully the City Centre manager in Manchester will be happy as he sits down for his Christmas Dinner. Cos its hard to find any other way of looking at it.

Beggars belief

Locking beggars up is not the answer. People need help and support to move away from this soul destroying activity, says Fay Selvan

Monday August 11, 2003

The Big Issue in the North does not look at the prosecution of beggars from a law enforcement angle. Penalising people is not the answer, for them or society at large.

Prosecuting beggars can only ever go hand in hand with support. Any supported, able person would not choose to make an income from begging. Penalising them for their vulnerability or their addiction - however that displays itself - is not the answer.

There is no incentive for people to stop begging - penalising them is not an incentive. Providing beggars with excellent services, opportunities and support is. Local government and other agencies need to consider what is being done to provide these incentives?

They also have to explore every option and not just defer people into the criminal justice system. If addicts were prescribed with heroin through a script from their GP and there was somewhere safe for them to inject, would they beg?

The focus needs to be shifted from the beggar to the agencies responsible for funding and providing support, to help people move on. The reality for some chaotic people is that they see committing crime and being prosecuted as the only way they will be noticed and receive the kind of support they need. The reality of this situation is an indictment of the state of our services not of the people.

People begging have probably been moved on time and again - custodial sentences won't alleviate this cycle. Beggars, with drug habits, who end up in prison may well receive temporary care. But the chances are they will be released shortly and be more vulnerable because there will not be the support services to help them stay off drugs.

It is apparent that that there has been an increase in the use of crack cocaine in our city centres. The nature of this drug makes it the drug of choice for aggressive beggars. They need a fast supply of cash to support their habit. Bristol police recently clamped down on this. We all should be asking what is being done to target the suppliers and dealers of this drug.

We know anecdotally from our magazine vendors that begging is one of the biggest factors affecting their sales. We send teams of staff to patrol the streets three times a day where they engage with beggars to come and sell the magazine. However we are one agency trying to do this.

We don't condone begging - it is soul destroying, humiliating and bad for everyone it affects. It simply allows people to sink further into exclusion.

The Big Issue network offers a unique mechanism. You know when you buy the magazine you are giving money to someone who is regularly engaging with professionals who can help them put their lives back together. Because of the legitimate income source we provide, we often see homeless people more regularly than any other service. The public can give their money knowing that person is trying to sort their lives out. They are making a conscious effort to move away from the streets for good.

· Fay Selvan is chairwoman of The Big Issue in the North

Rough justice

The government intends to punish persistent beggars, if necessary with prison terms. But is that the best way of getting them off the streets?

Matt Weaver
Wednesday August 27, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

The government will be delighted that the case of the Manchester beggar Leonard Hockey has received so much media attention.

Hockey had escaped punishment despite being arrested 97 times for begging in the centre of the city. But last week Manchester city council and the local police won a civil injunction banning him from pleading for change again. If

Hockey is caught for a 98th time, he faces up to two years in jail. Since his lawyers failed to prevent the injunction, other councils are likely to use similar tactics to ban beggars from their town centres.

A tough approach has been encouraged by the government. The white paper on anti-social behaviour, published in March, proposed to criminalise begging, with community service sentences for anyone caught begging three times.

But ministers believe that the best of way of ending the begging problem is to stop people giving to beggars in the first place. Government research in 2001 found that more than 50% of people give money to beggars. Ministers want to discourage donations by telling the public that most beggars are not homeless and that they spend most of their money on drugs.

A report by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister last year said: "More public education is needed so that donors understand that nine out of 10 people begging are not homeless and that a high proportion (estimated at 90%) of money given to beggars is spent on hard drugs."

The anti-social behaviour white paper echoed this theme. "There are places for rough sleepers to sleep at night," it said, "and there are benefits to pay for food and rent. The reality is that the majority of people who beg are doing so to sustain a drug habit, and are often caught up in much more serious crime."

For the purposes of "public education" Mr Hockey's is a convenient case. He begs to fund a heroin addiction, which costs him up to £22,000 a year. And he lives in a council flat in Salford so he doesn't sleep rough. But are his circumstances as typical as the government would like to make out?

A study in Bristol found that nine out of 10 people arrested for begging could provide a home address. Providing an address to the police is not synonymous with having a permanent roof over your head. None the less, the study appears to be the only basis for the suggestion that only 10% of beggars are homeless.

The claim is hotly disputed by the homelessness charity Crisis. "The vast majority of beggars are homeless," it said in its formal response to the anti-social behaviour white paper.

Support for Crisis's position comes from the government's own findings. In one of the biggest studies of its kind, researchers from the rough sleepers unit (RSU) interviewed 260 people who beg in five English cities. They found that only 18% of beggars had settled accommodation, a third were in hostels or night shelters, and nearly half (49%) were sleeping rough. Since that study was carried out, however, the government has met its manifesto commitment to cut the number of people sleeping rough by two-thirds. Meeting that target has bolstered the case that no one needs to sleep rough, and by extension that no one needs to beg.

The RSU study also did not take into account the availability of housing. In many areas of the north and midlands, including Manchester and Leeds, two of the cities studied, there is surplus housing. In these areas at least, it is unlikely that lack of housing is the key factor driving people to beg.

But what about drugs? When Manchester council won its injunction against Hockey last week, it claimed that 90% of money given to beggars goes towards drugs. This was based on a survey by Manchester police which found that 36 out of 40 beggars admitted that they begged to feed a drug habit.

Drug use among the panhandlers in the RSU study was almost as high, at 86%. A significant minority (37%) also admitted that they spent most of their money on drugs. Only 45% said they spent most of their money on food.

But the general public is not naive about drug taking among beggars. If anything it slightly exaggerates it. The RSU study found that just over half of the general public interviewed thought that most or all of the money given to beggars was spent on drugs. And yet 52% of those surveyed had still given money to beggars. It therefore seems unlikely that greater awareness of drug use among beggars will prevent people continuing to hand over their change.

If you can't stop people giving to beggars, what else could help tackle the problem? The government wants to introduce forced drug treatments for those caught trying to beg. There appears to be some support for this from beggars themselves. When asked to put forward practical solutions to their problems, 39% of beggars suggestedthey needed more help to tackle drug and alcohol dependency.

But, alongside drug treatment, ministers also want to introduce community sentences for persistent beggars, and they are encouraging the use of injunctions and the threat of prison against aggressive beggars.

A look at the background of people on the streets suggests that beggars need support rather than punishment. A study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that more than half the beggars and rough sleepers in Glasgow and Edinburgh had been in residential care or foster care, and a significant minority had been abused as children. Is the criminal justice system really the most appropriate way of helping such people?

Beg to differ

Government moves to forcibly stop begging have created an outcry but many charities support such action, says Jeremy Swain

Wednesday September 3, 2003

Many news organisations assume that, on begging, battle lines have been drawn between government and homelessness charities. The reality is far more complicated.

Many charities, including Thames Reach Bondway, have reached the same conclusion as the government - that public giving to those who beg is destructive. However, these charities are generally less interested in the issue of people who beg creating a "nuisance" and more with the link between begging and the misuse of hard drugs purchased with the proceeds.

Thames Reach Bondway's begging campaign - urging people not to give to beggars - has received much attention. But, in many towns and cities, campaigns that highlight alternative ways to give financial help have been running for some time and illustrate how misleading it is to suggest that agencies are always "head to head" with the government on this issue.

A range of alternative giving campaigns in Cheltenham, Nottingham, Manchester, Bath, Bristol, Exeter and south London are either supported by homelessness charities or have been set up by them, sometimes in cooperation with local authorities. In many towns and cities there appears to be a consensus amongst charities that begging can neither be supported nor ignored.

Many journalists also fail to recognise the significant impact that some homelessness charities have had in shaping the government's approach. The 1999 Rough Sleepers Unit's strategy contained so many ideas first mooted by homelessness agencies that it could have been written by the voluntary sector.

Many homelessness agencies work closely with central and local government to determine their polices towards rough sleepers, those who beg, substance misuse and antisocial behaviour. It is misleading to suggest that charities are either victims of government policy, fulminating angrily but helplessly against the latest raft of draconian proposals or in the pocket of government, being directed and manipulated by shadowy forces that have "bought their souls".

Recognising that there is some consensus that begging is unacceptable and dangerous, is different, of course, from saying that homelessness agencies are in support of the general thrust of the government's antisocial behaviour approach of which most homelessness agencies remain sceptical and distrustful.

One of our concerns, for example, is the blanket statement that comes from government, and finds its way into the antisocial behaviour white paper, that there are bed spaces available for rough sleepers. Over a year, our street outreach workers in London do not have enough bed spaces, particularly for men over 25, and often go out onto the streets with only a handful of vacancies at their disposal.

A second common supposition is that you can't stop people giving to beggars, a "fact" that informs much of the media debate. This is particularly interesting for me as I was an outreach worker in the mid-eighties in London when begging was much less common that it is today in the capital, but rough sleeping at three times the level it is in 2003.

Previous surveys show that members of the public, when confronted by someone begging, have a very ambivalent attitude and will often give money even when they suspect it may be spent on drugs or alcohol. However, they prefer alternative giving campaigns.

A Mori survey for the Evening Standard in 2000 showed that 85% of respondents supported a government alternative giving campaign called Change a Life, which aimed to persuade the public to support homeless charities instead of giving to beggars. (Interestingly, 75% also believed that rough sleepers addicted to drugs should be made to have treatment for their addiction).

This suggests to me that homelessness agencies, particularly London organisations which appear to be lagging behind those in other towns and cities, must be more imaginative in their response as people will not carry on giving to beggars if other options are offered.

The final supposition is that beggars need support rather than punishment. However, the whole issue of the appropriate mix of enforcement and care that can, and should, be used in working with homeless people and those using the street is much more complex.

The reason why some frontline agencies working with rough sleepers will countenance an enforcement approach to, for example, people begging aggressively and persistently is because they have experience of such actions leading to the person accepting help and treatment and as a result making big strides away from drug misuse and the street.

There are a number of outreach teams throughout the country, including Thames Reach Bondway's, working collaboratively with the police to achieve outcomes for rough sleepers that may involve an element of enforcement. I would argue therefore that the "punishment" leads to support being accepted and that the reality for those working day in, day out on the streets is that support and punishment are not an either/or.

There are a number of excellent innovative schemes such as the Arrest and Reachout scheme managed by the West London Mission in central London which, working closely with the courts and the police, has succeeded in getting many people into accommodation and to agree to treatment as an alternative, or alongside, a punitive response from the courts. These individuals would not have accepted help under other circumstances.

There remain some homelessness agencies that are not prepared to work collaboratively with the police, and that is their choice. This type of approach is inevitably sensitive and complicated and the protocols that define the relationship between the agency and the police must be carefully agreed and dutifully maintained. For those of us who are prepared to undertake such partnerships, the outcomes in terms of helping some of the most chaotic and needy to get off the streets and to reduce their drug use have been extremely heartening.

So, in answer to the question "Is the criminal justice system really the most appropriate way of helping such people?" my answer would be - "If the threat of punishment motivates a person to agree to treatment to address a serious and life-threatening drug habit, then this option must be considered and sometimes used, as a final resort when other approaches have been tried and failed."

Sadly there are certain suppositions which, on occasions, have become almost unchallengeable shibboleths that limit intelligent debate on these matters. The media and charities representing the interests of the homeless must work harder to avoid sweeping assumptions and a pat response.
· Jeremy Swain is chief executive of Thames Reach Bondway

Comment:I really, really hope that TRB never resort to using street collectors ever. Lots of other charities have, and for some reason this anti-social behaviour never gets a look in.

In the meantime, we would like to ask Jeremy Swain the following questions:

• what provision is there for safe injecting space for people who are homeless in Central London
• What provision is there for prescribing injectables to people engaging with treatment
• How much of the prescribing provision in London would meet the standards described by the Department of Health as "Enhanced Methadone Prescribing."
• And how many bed spaces are there, not on hospital wards, offering 24-hour medically staffed detoxification beds?

If and when the gaps in service above are adequately addressed, then and only then will it be anything other than arch hypocrisy to endorse the use of Antisocial Behaviour legislation. Unless of course you are a charity that has done very well out of endorsing this aspect of Government strategy.

Poster paints grim picture of beggars

Alison Benjamin
Wednesday July 23, 2003
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

A homelessness charity has launched a controversial campaign warning that giving money to beggars could kill them. Thames Reach Bondway (TRB) has produced a hard-hitting poster stating: "The money you give to those who beg ... may even help to buy the drugs that kill them".

The poster, which is initially being sent to the charity's supporters but which may later go on public display, urges people to donate their spare change to TRB instead of giving it to beggars.

"Giving money to those who beg is not a benign act without consequences - it contributes to lives being lost," says Jeremy Swain, TRB chief executive. "We must do all in our power to reduce the annual 'cull' of people dying through overdoses on our streets and in our hostels."

Britain's biggest homelessness charity, Shelter, is critical of TRB's approach. "Sweeping statements like this risk labelling all street beggars as addicts," warns Shelter's director, Adam Sampson. "Many people who beg are in genuine need and do so only as a last resort."

Liz Pritchard, chief executive of Homeless Link, an umbrella body of 700 homelessness agencies, says: "There is a danger that the campaign portrays all beggars as drug users and all homeless people as beggars."

Swain is unapologetic about the campaign, insisting that money given out of sympathy is being spent on hard drugs that cause death. "Those organisations working with drug users and homeless people must not flinch from stating this reality," he says.

TRB, which last year supported more than 4,000 rough sleepers and ex-homeless people, recognises that easier and quicker access to drug services in London is necessary to stop people begging. It is also urging the government to make detoxification facilities available within 24 hours, as in New York. Clients currently have to wait up to 10 weeks.

The campaign is reminiscent of a government advertising blitz in the run-up to Christmas 2000, urging the public not to give to beggars, but to donate to homelessness charities. Shelter said the drive "risked intensifying hostility to rough sleepers".

Swain argues that the TRB campaign is aimed at changing people's perceptions. Any donations will help fund start-up grants for homeless people who move into a flat, while the charity hopes to launch a telephone helpline for people to call if they are concerned about a homeless person.

Comment: What kills people? Yes drugs do. But so do prisons. And long waiting lists. And a lack of appropriate housing and eviction. Drugs of unknown strength, bad prescribing practice, lack of additional support - all these things kill people. But the easiest thing to do is blame the drugs, and then put the guilt on members of the public who gave the person a bit of money.

People are not stupid - they know that a great deal of money will be spent on drugs. But Westminster Council isn't proposing to make more funding available for accessing treatment. The RSU strategy of pushing people in to housing achieved the demanded reduction in rough sleeper numbers. But the same people still popped up on the streets so new tactics were required to achieve this outcome.

And the same agencies that helped achieve the 'fraud' that was the rough sleepers outcomes are now continuing the work as they target drug users.

The alternatives to begging: well there's the long wait for inadequate and punitive treatment regimes. Or there's shoplifting, dealing, sex work. Which would you like? Or doesn't it matter as long as we deliver clean streets by Christmas?

CAMDEN OBTAINS UK’S FIRST ASBO FOR MAINLINE RAIL STATION
Press Release
16 January 2002
Reference: 02/007

The London Borough of Camden, British Transport Police and Railtrack have been granted the first Anti Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) in the UK to cover a mainline railway station. The order was granted today (15 January) at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court against Daniel Murphy.

The order, which will be in place for five years, bans Mr Murphy from Euston, Euston Square, Kings Cross and St Pancras stations and from the Euston Road area. He is also banned from engaging in threatening behaviour anywhere in the Borough of Camden.

The Court was told that Mr Murphy had been involved in persistent anti social behaviour at Euston Station, including aggressive begging, spitting, and abusing staff and passengers. Officers from Camden Housing's Anti Social Behaviour Action team, staff from Railtrack and British Transport Police officers were in court. The cost of obtaining the order has been met by Railtrack.

Councillor Richard Arthur, Camden's Executive Member for Community Safety, said, " This is an excellent example of us working in partnership with other agencies. We have been very proactive in the use of these orders to crack down on unacceptable behaviour and this is the eighth ASBO we have obtained. In fact the Government white paper on Police Reform singles Camden out as an example of good practice for our use of Acceptable Behaviour Contracts and Anti Social Behaviour Orders. We will continue to use whatever means are necessary to protect those people who live and work in Camden from the undesirable effects of the drugs culture".

Chief Inspector David Dickason of British Transport Police said, "It is very important that people should be able to use London's stations without being subjected to harassment. This order is an important milestone in our efforts with the London boroughs to stamp out anti social behaviour on the railways."

Nuisance mother and son ban
BBC 2/8/01

A mother and son from Manchester have been issued with an anti-social behaviour order after neighbours lodged 50 complaints about them in seven months.

Manchester city magistrates granted the orders against Pamela Fuller, 40, and Steven Fuller, 22, from Openshaw.

Their neighbours had complained about drunken behaviour, damaged property and fighting since the Fullers moved to Wheler Street in October.

The pair now face a prison sentence if they use threatening or intimidating behaviour or language, or play loud music.

Upset neighbours took their complaints to the Fullers' landlord before approaching Manchester City Council.

A local resident who did not want to be named said: "This is a victory for the decent people in the community. I am ecstatic."

The Fullers initially received advice and warnings from Greater Manchester Police, the East Manchester Neighbour Nuisance Team and New Deals For Communities.

The city council brought the court action after attempts to resolve the complaints were ignored by the Fullers.

Basil Curley, the council's executive member for housing, said: "Anti-social behaviour like this makes people's lives a misery.

"It sends out a powerful message that Manchester City Council will not tolerate or allow nuisance neighbours to get away with it, whether they are council or private tenants."

The anti-social behaviour order will remain in force indefinitely.

Anti-social order man found dead
BBC 22.3.2001

The first adult in Wales to receive an anti-social behaviour order has been found dead. Matthew Davies, 24, was made the subject of a curfew last October by magistrates in Port Talbot, under regulations brought in by Home Secretary Jack Straw last year.

Mr Davies had been upsetting neighbours by drinking and urinating in the street, and being abusive. His death - six months after the order was imposed - is not being treated as suspicious. Mr Davies was found collapsed in Nantyffyllon. It is thought that he had been attending a house party nearby.

Last year, South Wales Police took the step of asking magistrates to place the order on Mr Davies after 36 complaints were made against him by people.

Mr Davies was among a group of trouble-makers who regularly gathered at the village green in Glyncorrwg for all-day drinking sessions.

Villagers were "terrorised" over a two year period, the court had heard. One resident had described Mr Davies as a "disgrace to humanity". Mr Davies was banned from drinking in public and places him under a night-time curfew.

He faced up to five years in prison for breaking the terms of the order.

The anti-social behaviour order was brought in by the Home Secretary under the Crime and Disorder Act to deal with persistent offenders.

Under the law, magistrates must be convinced the person has caused harassment, distress or alarm. The first order in Wales was brought last July against a 13-year-old boy from Wrexham who "plagued" neighbours.

Anti-social order boy on new charges
BBC 9.1.01

The UK's first ever recipient of an anti-social behaviour order - a 13-year-old boy from north Wales - has breached it for the second time. The boy - who cannot be named for legal reasons - now faces the possibility of a spell in a detention centre.

The Wrexham teenager appeared before a youth court with his younger brother on a joint charge of damaging a fence.

In his defence, his solicitor said both the boys had been provoked and the criminal damage had come about because their family was being harassed.
Since January last year, the boy has appeared in court four times on charges of theft, assault and criminal damage. He was made the subject of an anti-social behaviour order on 13 July last year.

The anti-social behaviour order was brought in by Home Secretary Jack Straw under the Crime and Disorder Act. Under the law, magistrates must be convinced the person has caused harassment, distress or alarm

The boy was told he must not cause damage in Wrexham and that he must not use behaviour likely to cause harassment or alarm. The teenager also cannot enter an exclusion zone placed round some local shops. He pleaded guilty to the criminal damage

The presiding magistrate asked for the county's youth offending team to produce a report on the possiblity of a sentence which included detention and training.

The boy must return to the court at the end of the month for sentencing. Darren Johnson, head of the north east Wales Youth Offending Team, said the order had worked in one sense.

"Although this person is now back in court, he did not commit a further offence in the original area," he said. In September last year, a 23-year-old man became the first adult in Wales to receive an anti-social behaviour order.

Police asked magistrates to place the order on Matthew Davies after 36 complaints were made against him by residents in a south Wales village.

Davies was among a group of trouble-makers who regularly gathered at the village green in Glyncorrwg near Port Talbot for all-day drinking sessions.