There were some interesting ideas in last week’s announcements about tackling antisocial behaviour, but unfortunately the government couldn’t resist the opportunity to trash the current system and to base its spin on the headline of scrapping ASBOs. The suggestion that nothing good is happening now is irritating for former ministers but, far more seriously, it is demoralising for the many people in police forces, local authorities and the voluntary sector across the country who are responsible for the rise in community confidence and the fall in reported cases of ASB.

One of the reasons cited for scrapping the ASBO is that it is a ‘badge of honour’. This charge is ridiculous. It is antisocial behaviour which is the badge of honour for some people – not the order that restricts their behaviour. The fact that the term ASBO is well enough known to feature on T-shirts and to have crossed over from criminal justice jargon to everyday speech shows the power of the idea. When my youngest son said to me as he headed out with his mates  – ‘don’t worry mum, I won’t get an ASBO’, he was demonstrating that he understands that yobbish behaviour is something that neither I nor the community he lives in is willing to put up with.

There is only one group of people for whom the ASBO should be a badge of honour – the Labour ministers who introduced it in the first place. Because, before the ASBO, there wasn’t a golden age of early intervention, preventative activity, responsive authorities and peaceful neighbourhoods. There were communities where people had their lives blighted by noise, aggression, drug dealing and yobbish behaviour, and few if any of the agencies who should have been helping them to live peacefully even recognised it, let alone were willing to take action against it.

That is why the often-cited fact that half of ASBOs were breached is actually a sign of success, not failure. In half the cases, the ASBO had prevented the misery of antisocial behaviour. In the other half, people were forced to face consequences for being unwilling to live up to the conditions placed on them, consequences which didn’t exist at all before the ASBO

Critics of the ASBO have also argued that effort should be focused on preventing antisocial behaviour, rather than punishing it. This is a wholly false distinction. For many people subject to an ASBO, this was the point where parenting support, help with drug or alcohol misuse and efforts to ensure better education or help with job-seeking actually kicked in. Furthermore, it’s a bit rich for this government to claim to be focusing on prevention at the same time that youth clubs are closing, drug and alcohol services are cut and the neighbourhood policing teams, who could often identify and nip troublemaking in the bud, are being reduced in number and downgraded in significance.

I strongly support the idea of allowing communities to trigger action on ASB. That’s why I got all police forces to sign up to a pledge requiring them to respond within 24 hours to all non-emergency complaints, to ensure monthly meetings and surgeries to listen to local people, to be judged on how they raised community confidence.  It’s why we started training an army of community crime fighters who could make sure that the police heard the voices of local people and responded.

Two years ago, this government scrapped all these measures. Now they are piloting a community trigger in three areas – I’m afraid this is too little and too late.

Note to colleagues who will form the next Labour government – sometimes it’s good to build on the past, rather than demolishing it.

—————————————————————————————

Jacqui Smith is former home secretary, writes the Monday Politics column for Progress, and tweets @smithjj62

—————————————————————————————

Photo: Iain Hinchcliffe