A storm in a teacup?

Anti Social Behaviour Orders two years on

Bernard Keenan, intern at Law Centre (NI), re-visits ASBOs and finds that they have had a better impact in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain, partly due to a better established system of dealing positively with anti-social behaviour by young people.

It has been two years since the Anti-Social Behaviour (Northern Ireland) Act was introduced to a small storm of controversy. Stormy, because the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) did not conduct an Equality Impact Assessment, as required by Section 75 of the 1998 Northern Ireland Act, despite protests from the Equality Commission, the Human Rights Commission, and the Commissioner for Children and Young People. And small, because surprisingly few people seemed to notice.  When it comes to tackling anti-social behaviour, it is the hard line that usually proves popular, at least in the rhetoric of ministers. But the implications of the government bypassing Section 75 legislation at its own discretion are enormous. In response to the accusation that his department had acted illegally in bypassing an equality assessment, Conal Devitt of the NIO Community Safety Unit told the BBC in June 2005:

‘It is our belief that the legislation did not require us to have a full Equality Impact Assessment done; we in effect screened it out. Where there is concern about the criminalization of young people, that is an understandable concern; but the government doesn’t share that concern. It’s your behaviour that gets you in front of the courts, not what age you are, what colour you are, what gender. It’s defined by the residents and 80% of people want to see these things tackled.’

While it is true that no one would call the prohibition of murder a sexist law because more men are convicted than women, the NIO line rang a little hollow to some. The statistics from England and Wales showed that the majority of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) were taken out on people aged 21 or under, usually male, and often for the most trivial of behaviour. While some local authorities employed them sparingly and as a last resort, in some more zealous regions they became a means to ‘name-and-shame’ troubled individuals, leading to spells of imprisonment without conviction of a criminal offence.

In 2004 Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, described the UK as being in the grip of ‘Asbo mania’. His report found ‘considerable pressure’ had been applied by both the public and central government on police and local authorities to apply for ASBOs, and equally on magistrates to grant them.  As government rhetoric in England continued to promote ASBOs as the answer to society’s woes, the idea of introducing them to Northern Ireland prompted fears.

NICCY, the office of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, argued that young people would be punished twice, once by the law and again by paramilitary punishments, meted out after they had been publicly named. Besides, no one outside New Labour seemed sure if they actually work, for example, in 2004, 42% of all ASBOs were breached, suggesting that the behaviour itself is often not effectively prevented, but rather that it persists and is then punished. The local authority in Greater Manchester has issued more ASBOs than neighbouring towns and cities yet the population there retains a higher level of concern about anti social behaviour. This suggests that ASBOs may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than reducing people’s fear of ‘anti-social behaviour’, they exacerbate it.

In a region with areas of extreme deprivation and a lack of confidence in police and local authorities ingrained in communities, ASBOs could well have been disastrous. But happily, since the first ASBO was issued in Northern Ireland against a fourteen year old boy from the Portrush area, the PSNI has issued only three against juveniles. One was for six weeks and was breached, while two were interim ASBOs granted before a hearing on criminal charges (a kind of insurance policy against further offending). Three have also been issued against adults, two of which were upon conviction for a criminal offence (known as CRASBOs) and one was an interim order, incidentally breached before the hearing, no doubt adding to the charges. Clearly, the floodgates have not opened.

What does this mean then? Were the critics all wrong? Koulla Yiasouma of Include Youth, a vocal opponent of the legislation, does not think so. ‘There haven’t been that many ASBOs granted, and we’d like to take credit for that!’ she jokes.

‘There have been a few granted against travellers and against a few children and adults, but the word on the street is not many. Some of that we can put down to campaigning by the youth sector, but the Youth Justice Agency doesn’t seem to have an appetite for them. In fact they seem to try to prevent resort to ASBOs. Councils tend to try for ABCs (Acceptable Behaviour Contracts), and we’ve even had a few calls from local police officers on the beat, asking who to talk to about how they can deal with problem kids in the area, without going for ASBOs.’

Budgetary constraints also play a role, with no extra cash having been made available to fund the enforcement of the orders. It is perhaps a testament to the effectiveness of Youth Conferencing and other community-based restorative justice programmes that so few ASBOs have been required. Unlike England and Wales, the Northern Irish Youth Conferencing system provides a formal restorative option for dealing with young offenders that better suits their needs.

Both sides can claim a victory. The NIO can say that ASBOs are indeed only being used as a last resort, just another weapon to fight crime in local communities; while critics will point out that they were right all along, we simply do not need ASBOs here, and that they are incompatible with the philosophy of social welfare. ASBOs are here to stay, hopefully always as a last resort.

© Law Centre (NI) 2006