Today in the Boston Globe there was a story about the "Anti Social Behavior Orders" -- ASBOS -- in the UK. This is something I hadn't heard of before. The story had a mostly negative slant, talking about a "nanny state" but I wondered what our Fodor Brits feel about the laws and how they are being enforced. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Most people who read the British newspapers know about the mother who walks around her house in her underwear, the man who likes to sunbathe in a pink thong, and the woman who threw a rhubarb at her brother during a family spat.

"All three received antisocial behavior orders from the courts, which told them to cease actions that could be considered alarming or distressing to others. Their names were published in the papers, as were their offenses, and they joined thousands of others throughout the country who have been ordered to change their ways.
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"The orders prohibit a person from engaging in a specific behavior -- provoking neighbors, disgusting beachgoers, or throwing vegetables. Violating the orders can land a person in jail.
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The Labor government says the orders help protect the public from hooligans who are terrorizing neighborhoods.
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But civil rights groups say that they are increasingly concerned that the orders are being used to stop relatively innocuous behavior, and that the respect agenda is blowing things out of proportion.

The Council of Europe's human rights commissioner warned this summer that some aspects of ''asbo-mania" might be violating human rights law.
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Neighbors are encouraged to keep ''asbo diaries" recording disturbing behavior that can be presented in court.
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But even as the media publicize the most ridiculous-sounding antisocial behaviors -- the elderly man who was prohibited from being sarcastic, the teenager who was banned from using the word chicken, the boy who had to stop wearing hooded sweatshirts -- the orders are being embraced by many across the country.
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In Camden, an innercity borough of London that has given out more asbos -- 172 as of the end of September -- than any other area of the city, council members say the rates of antisocial behavior and crime have dropped and residents are less worried about crime.
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But others question whether Britain is truly in the midst of a moral decline. They see a touchy country in which neighbors spy on neighbors, crying foul at the slightest provocation.

The full article is currently online at:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/eur...es/2005/10/23/ as_britain_curbs_bad_conduct_critics_fear_a_nanny_ state/

but I think the Globe only leaves their stories freely accessible for a couple of days.

a woman threw a rhubarb at her brother?

I HATE when that happens.

Give offialdom enough rope and it'll hang every single one of us sooner or later.

But, self-satisfied in the way only Bostonians can manage, the article fundamentally misses the point.

Life in urban Britain has for the past two decades involved a great deal of exposure by ordinary citizens to intolerable behaviour, not quite criminal and much of it by teenagers. A couple of preposterous Acts of Parliament enacted under the Tories have made things like threatening neighbours, public urination, persistent public drunkenness and so on impossible to prosecute (Maggie Thatcher, for all her sterling work in re-arranging Britain's economy and putting some backbone into Western leaders' softness on Soviet communist expansionism, allowed some dunderheaded, soft on criminality, laws through during her time in office).

ASBOs provide some sanctions against the kind of thuggish behaviour a more civilised era would have solved by policemen bashing the kids around the ears or by parents with the moral fibre to discipline the brats in the first place.

Like any system, ASBOs are open to abuse. In our case, there are too many stories of eccentrics being hounded by bureaucrats (of whom, since B Liar came to power, we have far too many, but that's a different story).

But that's probably a less horrendous downside than what can happen (turning teenage loutishness into real criminality) under "zero tolerance" policies - the solution in much of the US to a similar problem.

To describe ASBOs as a nanny state policy is balmy. The insane cases are clearly examples of magistrates not using their common sense and chucking the case out, with costs awarded against the persecutors and a recommendation their careers be terminated (and why we have such such lilly-livered magistrates these days is an interesting question too). But when gangs of children repeatedly throw excrement through old ladies' letter boxes, they need dealing with.

Sadly, in our lawyer-infested society, ASBOs seem the best we can do.

Well of course, the press, es[ecially the foreign press always go for the "Straight banana" story.

It's also easy to talk about civil rights in these cases if you live in a pleasant leafy subburb.

If you live on a council estate and the family from Hell that made your life a misery has been prevented from doing so, then it's a different matter.

Yes, I agree with Flanner and Oldie.

One thing that annoyed me about that article is the spelling "Labor" Party.

I know that in the US "labour" is "labor", but in the name of a British political party, they might have the courtesy to use the official spelling.

Totally agree with the above. You'll always get some bolshie characters bearing grudges or chips on their shoulders who abuse laws of this type for their own ends and also people who scream "human rights" at anything they perceive as not matching their own definition of political correctness. But on the whole, I think it's seen as a Good Thing, or at least a step in the right direction, by most law-abiding citizens.

ASBOs are what I do (well the whole range of Anti-Social Behaviour and Crime - buy hey, that’s enough about me!)

Not surprisingly, I’m quite a fan of them. The idea of an ASBO is to stop “behaviour likely to cause alarm harassment or distress to another person, not immediately related to the perpetrator”

Some of the one’s that get highlighted are either misunderstood or are simply an abuse of the process.

To give you an example of the first – quite a lot of young men in Manchester are forbidden from wearing just one glove. This seems a bit stupid until you realise that this is street-gang code for carrying a gun (the glove is on the shooting hand so that the residue goes on the glove and can be thrown away). So once you know the reason it’s not as daft as it sounds.

There are some stupid ones – a suicidal woman has been banned from bridges. A farmer was ordered to keep his pigs from escaping (they promptly escaped) and one old man is forbidden from “annoying anyone in Kettering” which given that Kettering is quite a big place is a big undertaking.

The sort of people who tend to dislike ASBOs (Yes Liberty I’m talking about you!) tend to live in the sort of areas where they don’t need them.

It’s not as if you can just slap one of these things on anyone willy-nilly (well you can but it can be challenged). You have to go to Magistrates or Crown Court and persuade a judge to grant the order (the weak link in the English legal system is that NO judges have ever practised in Criminal Law – so they have no bloody idea about anything – they’re planning and contract law barristers in the main.) So they’re not that easy to get. There are also restrictions on what you can put in them to ensure that they are compliant with the Human Rights Act (and don’t get me started on that farrago – really don’t, the internet will explode when I rage at the HR Act with the heat of a million suns.)

it seems the newspaper chose the extreme examples. you are not in danger of getting slapped with an ASBO for just annoying behaviour and neighbours are not spying on neighbours to set them up for forgetting to take out the rubbish (this isn't switzerland!)

with the risk of sounding alarmist or like a grumpy old man, i will say that there is no nanny state. in fact things are pretty out of control.

perhaps most of the europhiles here who argue if it's ok to where brown instead of black or if it's ok to raise your voice above 1db in europe have never been out in a typical town centre past 10:00 in the evening. you will see police who are basically ready for mini riots (and they occur all the time). walk through the same town centre on sunday morning and you will see a trail of blood and broken glass shop fronts.

just this weekend(in addition to the usual mayhem), my local off-licence was rammed by a car, the whole front pushed in...so someone could steal a few bottles. this was directly across from the station in a very high traffic and visible area.

when your car is broken into or seriously vandalised, the police typically don't even come out it's so common. you usually get "yeah you're the tenth one tonight".

i am not talking about "ghettos" but decent areas and villages. everyone has their anecdotes of crime but i have lived many places all over the world and the UK is certainly the worst i have seen for violent behaviour (as well as litter, harassment, etc).

i don't know if ASBOs are the answer but to make it sound like UK police are singapore style nit-pickers could not be further from reality.

It is not actually that easy to get an ASBO awarded (I used to work at a housing association and trying to deal legally with nightmare tenants/neighbours is extremely difficult and a long-winded affair). The examples may sound silly but without knowing the whole story you can't judge. Living in an area with lots of problems I think they are a great idea.
By the way, the example of the teenager who was banned from saying chicken was an extremely nasty little thug who was homophobically bullying a young boy at his school (chicken being slang for a young homosexual) and the word 'chicken' formed part of the verbal abuse of the child. There was a lot more to it than simply saying or banning 'chicken.'

I take it, by the way, that lawmakers and judges in the US are all a perfect combination of Solon and Solomon, whose judgements never give rise to appeals to the Supreme Court...?!

For what it's worth, ASBOs are a formalised version of civil injunctions that a number of local councils had turned to to deal with persistent bad neighbours on council estates. Imagine a collection of candidates for the Jerry Springer show or Judge Judy all carrying on their disputes outside your front door at all hours of the night, or worse still making you the object of them.

To take the above point re injunctions. The reason that ASBOs were brought in is that injunctions don’t work. They tend not to have the power of arrest.

However breaching the terms of and ASBO is in itself a criminal act. Thus if you specify that an individual cannot go into a certain area, or carry certain items (things like jemmies and spray paints) simply being in that area or carrying those items is an offence, even if the behaviour isn’t itself criminal.

The original item states that Camden has 172 ASBOs. You may be interested to know that 90% of these are against crack-addicted prostitutes who make life in some areas (eg Kings Cross) unbearable. The majority of the rest are against aggressive beggars addicted to one thing or another.

Nona: Did you have any experience of demoted tenancies? (I work for a Local authority and we’re still feeling our way with these)

I would agree with others here who have highlighted abuse of process, and pointed out that most of these orders are a justifiable attempt to curb unacceptable behaviour.

I do, however, have a big problem with the issue of ASBOs to solve problems. If one gloved men in Manchester are carrying guns, arrest and prosecute them for firearms offences. Don't use an ASBO to create a new offence of "Impersonating Michael Jackson".

Similarly, if somebody is bullying, then use anti bullying, or anti assault legistlation. Not an ASBO on words (If he goes into a KFC, is he allowed to point ? or does he have to cut all fowls out of his diet?)

To me, the abuse of ASBOs is to allow an individual to be jailed for "offences" that do not exist under law.
My exception would be Wayne Rooney, who I feel should be given ASBO instead of a red card.

Well that's agreed then.

ASBOs on cliche mongering Bostonian journalists, naive enough to take anything the Council of Europe says seriously.

So who's going to ask Islington council (they all live in Islington, these journos) to draft one?

Well that’s the point isn’t it? They’re not carrying guns – so they’re not breaking any rules. What they are saying is that they are prepared to carry a gun, and affirming membership of a gang. Wearing one glove or red and black are not crimes but they massively impact on the quality of life in the area.

Here’s the original story (ironically from the Guardian):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/st...899883,00.html

And in much greater detail from the council itself (interesting reading, especially given the events in Birmingham at the moment)

ooops! That Manchester council URL is:

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/news/2003/feb/glove.htm

FlannerUK -- I was hoping to get your take on this, and I wasn’t disappointed! Thanks to everyone for balancing the picture. I knew the Globe wasn’t giving us the whole story.

Here in Maidenhead, we are suffering from the influx of the Slough ASBO crowd. They have been causing increasingly serious problems at night around the Maidenhead train station and other spots. Two are now being held on attempted murder charges (I'm slowly working through the local newspapers we didn't read while away for a month).

That's the big downside of ASBOs as far as I'm concerned. It may make the ASBOs' home neighborhoods better, but it doesn't keep them from harrassing others farther away.

Our part of town is usually quiet and peaceful but our neighbors say even the local kids are getting nervous as seriously rowdy teens are coming up from Slough and down from Reading to cause problems. And of course, as strangers, they're not immediately recognized as ASBOs. And they know how to melt into the night quickly, so the local police here are finding themselves shorthanded and overworked deaing with these problem youths from other towns. It takes a while to put the pieces together; in the meantime things have gotten dicey in certain neighborhoods late at night, esp. within walking distance of the train station.

As for self-satisfied cliche mongering journalists, there are MORE than enough of those home-grown in the UK.

I personally think the ASBO concept should be extended to cover anti-social behaviour by middle-class people. Anyone driving around a town or city centre in a big four-wheel-drive car or someone allowing a mobile phone to ring in a theatre, for example, should have an ASBO slapped on them.

OK Geoff and what about all the OAPs and new mothers who have all day to shop, but insist on coming out with their shopping trolleys and pushchairs during my lunch hour, when I'm trying to dash around the shops? I definitely think there should be some sort of anti-social behaviour category for them. Oh, and the "ambulance chasers" who hang around the entrance to my local shopping centre asking me if I've had any accidents or injuries - one of these days I'll pluck up enough courage to tell them that they will have if they ask me one more time