So far during the campaign before the July 4 election campaign, Labour has been pressing on anti-social behaviour (ASB), if it is saying anything about criminal justice. That doesn’t acknowledge that the Coalition and then Conservative Governments since 2010 have – ironically – been carrying on the approach to ASB that the Blair and Brown governments of 1997 to 2010 laid out, writes Mark Rowe.
Labour has named a ‘crack down on anti-social behaviour’ as one of its six ‘missions’. Promised in (slightly) more detail are ‘more neighbourhood police paid for by ending wasteful contracts’, which sounds unfriendly to private security or any partners except the police. Also promised are thousands of extra police and support officers, ‘so policing gets back to doing what it’s supposed to do’.
The idea of making ‘the streets’ safer is an odd one; any acquaintance with any town or village will tell you that people seldom are ‘on the street’; instead, they are going by car from shopping centre to workplace to supermarket and so on. The talk of ‘crack down’ and new penalties for offenders (which needless to say will be ‘tough’) is cliched. In all, it supposes an equation of more police ‘on the beat’ equalling more safety, so simplistic as to be comic when compared to the reality of police work according to priorities of threat-risk-harm. The barest details of Labour’s ‘mission’ against ASB lump in numerous crimes that are not necessarily or even largely to do with ASB; such as fly-tipping (a matter for local government not the police), and shoplifting if carried out by organised groups.
So overwhelmed are police by the sheer amount of volume crime – theft from retail, fraud, sexual harassment – that ASB, if short of violence, doesn’t get a police response. Hence the genuinely innovative idea of anti-social behaviour orders, under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. ASB then was defined as including anything ‘likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’, littering, graffiti, drug dealing and drunkenness (something which, to judge by any city centre on any weekend, has been completely decriminalised – indeed, those who are too drunk to call a taxi or look after themselves are in need of protection, from predators). As the Home Office minister John Denham admitted in a 2003 document: ‘Too often, the process of applying for an ASBO has been protracted and expensive, while the remedy available has not always proved adequate.’ Labour was coming up against an actuarial problem; if someone was littering, threatening and swearing at neighbours, fly-tipping, and causing misery to a neighbourhood, yes; that bothered many people (who were also Labour voters). Yet if those crimes or nuisances did not merit custody, hence the new ASBO regime, did it make financial sense for the state to spend hundreds of even thousands of pounds in local government officer and court time on one person, to end up with a ban, that the offender might well ignore, short of going to prison (at further expense to the state)? Two rival views of criminal justice were wrestling; probation and community sentences; and incarceration, caricatured as soft and tough.
ASBOs have gone and the names have changed – in 2014 the Coalition brought in Public Space Protection Orders (PSPO) to tackle ASB, yet the complaints of bad behaviour continue. Labour is proposing yet another new ‘Respect Orders’, (that’ll be ‘tough’ it goes without saying) ‘with criminal sanctions for antisocial behaviour’. Whatever the mix of powers used by police and local government for a generation now, the question remains unanswered; what works, short of prison, when a ‘prolific offender’ (to take an example from Stockton) – who steals from shops, is violent and abusive, and drinks on-street – who aggravates an entire town centre – appears not to want to or know how to change his ways?
To put that another way, who would want to criminalise someone for being homeless – something that the authorities are at pains, as in Lewisham, to avoid; and yet that unfortunate person may be antisocial or a nuisance in similar ways to someone malicious, who society would feel far less sympathy for? How to tell apart the two?
On Saturday, June 1 Lewisham brings into force a PSPO (including signage in ‘key areas’) made by the south London borough to reduce ASB and address the behaviours most complained about, such as dog and alcohol related nuisance. One in four residents told the council that they are concerned about ASB and crime and want this to be a focus for the council. Hence a borough-wide PSPO that includes:
No public urination and defecation;
No amplified speech or music in open spaces;
No dog related antisocial behaviour in public spaces and parks; and
No illegal encampments.
The restrictions on alcohol and the consumption of drugs will apply in these council wards: Evelyn, Deptford, Brockley, Ladywell, Lewisham Central, Rushey Green, Sydenham, Bellingham, Catford South, Hither Green and Downham. The ‘soft versus tough’ debate has evolved since the 2000s, so that Lewisham like other councils promises a ‘public health approach’ and an Equalities Impact Assessment was made to make sure that vulnerable groups are ‘not disproportionately impacted’.
A PSPO is described as a tool that gives the police and council officers (and patrollers under private contract if hired) powers to combat specific antisocial behaviours. Brenda Dacres, Mayor of Lewisham said: “Thank you to all our local residents and businesses who took part in our consultation process about antisocial behaviour in the borough. This feedback has been invaluable and we have directly responded to your concerns by confirming this PSPO in Lewisham. We are keen to take a support-led approach and our teams will be out in the borough soon to engage and educate residents about our plans to tackle ASB.”
Some PSPOs follow the original intention of the 2014 law by covering specific places or events, such as around water, as proposed in Ashford in Kent; or busy match days around Wembley Stadium, hence PSPOs by Brent, the local north London council. However, most notoriously during the mass gate-crashing of the Euros final at Wembley in July 2021, sheer numbers of football fans give cover to those who want to urinate in gutters, take drugs, tout tickets, sell unlicensed merchandise and so forth.
Or, PSPOs cover seaside or other places that see visitors causing ASB, such as new PSPOs in force in Torbay.
Some PSPOs cover the banes of urban life such as (proposed for example by Barking and Dagenham Council in east London) amplified music. Or, car cruisers who drive slow or fast on straight roads or retail car parks, also playing music; as a PSPO in Stafford is due to tackle. A trend identified in recent years by Professional Security is of council area-wide PSPOs against some problem, which makes an order so diffuse as to be unenforceable.
Given Labour’s other ‘missions’ that will mean spending more on the National Health Service, for example, who’s to say the public sector will get more resources to make ‘tough’ measures stick (such as, seeing fines get actually paid) than were around in the 2000s, or 2010s?
Photo by Mark Rowe; ‘no urinating, spitting, or defecating’ PSPO signage, Folkestone, Kent.
