ASBO nationThe criminalisation of nuisance

The Politics of Anti-Social Behaviour

“…Elsewhere, these dimensions of the issue have been referred to as part of the 'secret history' of ASB (Squires and Stephen, 2005), although perhaps overlooked, neglected or forgotten might prove the more appropriate adjectives.…”

“…As Jack Straw, New Labour's first Home Secretary, said in the preface to No More Excuses, the White Paper introducing the Youth Justice Reforms, 'we have to break the link between between juvenile crime and disorder and the serial burglar of the future' (Home Office, 1987). In fact, as has been argued in a number of places (Brown, 2004;Squires and Stephen, 2005), drawing upon Cohen's 'dispersal of discipline' hypothesis (Cohen, 1985), what is often posed as 'diversion' especially in the context of a widespread moral panic about youthful crime and disorder, often turns into a simple process of delinquency 'net-widening'. Precisely the same process has been observed in the housing management field, as Burney notes, drawing upon research by Hunter and Nixon (2001) and Brown (2004): the attribution of 'multiple risk factors leads tenants to be labelled anti-socialy housing management creates anti-social behaviour' (Burney, 2005, 109).…”

Beyond ‘Badges of Honour’: young people’s perceptions of their anti-social behaviour orders

“…ASBOs were introduced in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, and were to become was one of the cornerstones of New Labour's crime and disorder strategy (Donoghue 2010;Millie, 2009a;Burney, 2005;Squires and Stephen, 2005). These civil orders have prohibited individuals from certain activities (criminal or non-criminal) or specific areas, with a breach of the order treated as a criminal offence.…”

“…No crime need necessarily have been committed at the time of the intervention, so their logic resonates with what is sometimes called the 'precautionary principle' (Crawford, 2009a;818). Born from New Labour's conditional vision for citizenship, the 'rights and responsibilities' agenda and rising concern for the cumulative effect of low-level nuisance, ASBOs were an attempt to discipline individuals whom the government considered had failed considerably in their duty to behave according to moral norms (see Burney, 2005;Millie, 2009a;Squires and Stephen, 2005). The behaviour which ASBOs have been used to address has varied widely (Hewitt, 2007), which is often attributed to antisocial behaviour being a vague, nebulous and relative concept (Nixon, 2005).…”

“…ASBOs have been extensively studied by academics (Burney, 2005;Squires and Stephen, 2005;Squires, 2008a;Koffman 2006;Millie 2009a), but independent empirical research undertaken with young people who have been served with these orders remains relatively limited. Most existing published work has either been commissioned from within the criminal justice system (Solanki et al, 2006), has drawn particularly on the experiences of those young people confined within prisons and detention centres (Wain and Burney, 2007), or has formed part of investigations of ASBOs where young people are considered along with adults rather than as a particular case (Matthews et al, 2005;Wain and Burney, 2007).…”