Anti-social behaviour reform threatens ASBOs
Home secretary Theresa May has announced plans to radically reform the way anti-social behaviour is managed.
In a speech yesterday, Ms May said that ‘it’s time to move beyond the ASBO’ after Home Office statistics showed breaches of anti-social behaviour orders had risen above 50 per cent, and their use has fallen to the lowest level to date.
She said: ‘For 13 years, politicians told us that the government had the answer; that the ASBO was the silver bullet that would cure all society’s ills. It wasn’t.
‘Labour introduced a ludicrous list of powers for tackling anti-social behaviour – the ISO, the ASBI, the ASBO and the CRASBO.
‘These sanctions were too complex and bureaucratic - there were too many of them, they were too time consuming and expensive and they often criminalised young people unnecessarily, acting as a conveyor belt to serious crime and prison.
‘The latest ASBO statistics have shown that breach rates have yet again increased – more than half are breached at least once, 40 per cent are breached more than once and their use has fallen yet again, to the lowest ever level.
‘We need a complete change in emphasis, with communities working with the police and other agencies to stop bad behaviour escalating that far.’
Peter Jackson, managing director of Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group, said: ‘The time is right for a review of how anti-social behaviour is dealt with. However, ASBOs have worked and would continue to work – the many different types of order have been asked for by practitioners, but simplification would be welcome.
‘If there is to be one “super order” then we’d need to know how it is going to be administered, and how much it will cost. The housing world is keen to work with the government to look at how ASB is dealt with. Social landlords want to use what works.’
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Readers' comments (10)
kass | 29/07/2010 9:11 am
the first thing Theresa May needs to do if she really means to improve the situation for the victims is give free legal aid to tenants to take to court landlords who fail to protect them from antisocial behaviour by refusing to take action or by being inefficient or by colluding with antisocial tenants.
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Chris | 29/07/2010 9:28 am
I do hope that this happens - I do hope that landlords are left to enforce tenancy agreements - the local authority civil agreements - and the police to maintain law and order (so long as there are going to be police, courts and prisons left sufficient to keep crime at bay).
This one gets a cautionary thumbs up for the coalition from me - but for how long depends on the substance behind the rhetoric.
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Alpha One | 29/07/2010 10:42 am
The ASBO never worked because the power to imprison for breaches was never exercised.
ASBOs should carry a power of arrest and immediate imprisonment for any breaches of a period of not less than 5 years, no appeals.
Offenders would not go before a court, they would go straight to jail and be kept there for 5 years.
You could appeal against the imposition of the ASBO itself or the terms of it, but not against the sentence for breaching it.
That would make ASBOs more of a threat and less of a badge of honour.
As it is now, Landlord will have to tackle ASB through the courts, further filling up their dockets, costing money and wasting time. Unless the government brings in a fast track procedure for evicting ASB tenants, then this problem is not going to get better by getting rid of the ASBO.
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Paul Mason | 29/07/2010 10:51 am
@AlphaOne - spot on.
The biggest fear - and problem - for social housing tenants is antisocial behaviour.
Any housing manager will tell you that enforcing the tenancy agreement normally takes at least 18 months of legal wrangling and even nowadays the courts are reluctant to evict people. That's a long time to live through a nightmare, particularly if the problem isn't solved at the end of it.
So even if ASBOs weren't fully enforced, they offered a much more potentially powerful way of shifting this problem. Those landlords that did do a good job with ASBOs (eg Manchester City Council Housing Dept RIP) made sure they were very effective.
As ever it looks like a case of not wishing to properly use the legislation and procedures we already have. It's always a shame when politicians go down the route of 'I don't want to do this because someone else invented it'
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Anonymous | 29/07/2010 11:03 am
- Paul Mason - agree
Courts will not want to evict people without anywhere to go and would never do it if there are children involved. Anti-social behaviour is generally burocratic because of the need to provide extensive evidence from both landlord and affected tenants. Then this needs to be seen through relentlessly from begining to end, ASBOs are an useful milestone and may actually help address the underlying issues. Although the burocrasy makes it costly and the more cases there are the less manageable is to achieve results.
I look forward to the simplification from Theresa May - if it can deliver.
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Bernard Bagpuss | 29/07/2010 11:59 am
I agree that Teresa May is right to try and remove the bureaucracy of the previous regime, but will only be convinced once I see what that will look like. Focussing on the end punishment for ASB has been proven time and time again to not resolve the issue, and that we need to be focussing our attention (and what little funds are available) on tackling the root cause. If the focus is on the punishment - i.e. ASBO/ASBI/CRASBO/jail sentence or whatever term is used then we'll never get it right. With less money available, lets not keep re-hashing the same old ideas and look at new, innovative solutions to a hugely important issue.
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Jon Southall | 29/07/2010 1:18 pm
As a victim of ASB, I would say the biggest help was introducing Community Wardens who regularly patrolled the local area. Until they regularly visited the area, the youths were a problem (and also their ineffective parents). I think the answer is for the authorities to have an increased presence in areas with ASB; the wardens were doing a great job.
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Anonymous | 29/07/2010 2:26 pm
So can we expect to see the end of specialist asbo teams, at vast expense, withing housing departments.
There was the scame of allocating the costs which should be borne by the community and therefore the general fund into the housing budget.
There is also the nonsense of not dealing with the issue through allocations and, in particular, attacking the lunacy of needs-based letting.
End the rights of the reckless to be housed at taxpayers' expense and introduce legislation to make a tenancy a privilege not an entitlement by inserting conditions into the tenancy contract which make it easier to repossess.
Above all repossess with extreme prejudice ... pour les encourager les autres.
Right-to-buy has a part to play. People who own a stake in an asset do Respect full stop.
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Chris | 29/07/2010 6:19 pm
Although there is a basis to your argument Anonymous, can we as a society afford to create a significant underclass or bands of outlaws, which would be the natural outcome of the policies you suggest?
If there is a merit based letting system, where do those with less merit go for housing? Likewise, where do those who do not measure up with the merit definition go for any state supported or provided service? And without an address, where would they go for work?
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| 29/07/2010 8:42 pm
Anonymous | 29/07/2010 2:26 pm is, amazingly, not me and is of course completely right. Needs based allocation creates bands of outlaws through the perverse incentives to overbreed and become feckless and welfare dependent just to game the system and score a council flat. And the next generation do the same, a vicious cicle. There would simply be less underclass to house as they would not have any incentive it breed more of themselves to get housed in the first place. Intergeneration welfare dependency problem solved.
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