ASBO nation

The criminalisation of nuisance

Squires, Peter, Peter Squires

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781847420282
• eBook ISBN: 9781447315506
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) has been a major preoccupation of New Labour's project of social and political renewal, with ASBOs a controversial addition to crime and disorder management powers. Thought by some to be a dangerous extension of the power to criminalise, by others as a vital dimension of local governance, there remains a concerning lack of evidence as to whether or not they compound social exclusion.

This collection, from an impressive panel of contributors, brings together opinion, commentary, research evidence, professional guidance, debate and critique in order to understand the phenomenon of anti-social behaviour.It considers the earliest available evidence in order to evaluate the Government's ASB strategy, debates contrasting definitions of anti-social behaviour and examines policy and practice issues affected by it.

Contributors ask what the recent history of ASB governance tells us about how the issue will develop to shape public and social policies in the years to come. Reflecting the perspectives of practitioners, victims and perpetrators, the book should become the standard text in the field.

Part One
Managing anti-social behaviour: priorities and approaches

ONE

Why tackle anti-social behaviour?

Jessica Jacobson, Andrew Millie and Mike Hough

The question addressed by this chapter may seem naive. For many, especially those who advocate firm action against anti-social behaviour (ASB), it is self-evident that the central and local state should be engaged as vigorously as possible in efforts to crack down on anti-social behaviour. However, governments vary over place and time in their enthusiasm for doing so (cf Burney, 2005), and it is reasonable to ask why they should take on this responsibility, and why they should do so now.

The government’s ‘Respect’ website1 provides a succinct answer: ‘Anti-social behaviour ruins lives. It doesn’t just make life unpleasant; it prevents the renewal of disadvantaged areas and creates an environment where more serious crime can take hold.’ In fact, it has provided three answers in a single sentence. This alone may suggest that there is room to take a critical view of rationales for tackling ASB. The concept of ASB is a slippery one to define, of course, and governments tend to duck the issue. We can all agree that ASB falls somewhere on the continuum between mere bad manners, on the one hand, and serious criminality, on the other. Precisely where the boundaries fall is a contentious issue, because any behaviour labelled as ASB implicitly falls within the scope of the state apparatus for tackling it.2

In this chapter we have drawn on the results of a study that combined empirical research in five areas with a review of policy and research literature.3 One of the aims of the study was to examine the rationales offered by policy documents and by local officials for tackling ASB. The empirical element of the study involved interviews with key officials responsible for tackling ASB, and reviews of policy documents in five Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) in England and Wales. Although the research was conducted in 2003/04, its findings are still relevant to contemporary debate about ASB. We have anonymised the five participating sites as Lonborough, Newtown, Northport, Prospertown and Westerncity. All were cities or large local authority districts within cities. The study found, both in the policy and research literature and in officials’ accounts of their work, four main rationales for tackling ASB:

• the quality of life rationale: ASB should be tackled because it is a serious problem that makes people miserable and fearful;

• the ‘broken windows’ rationale: ASB should be tackled because, left unattended, it leads to serious crime;

• the crime-fighting or zero-tolerance rationale: ASB strategies are useful and practical crime-fighting tools;

• the regeneration rationale: action on ASB should contribute to the social and economic regeneration of local areas.

We shall discuss each of these rationales in turn – examining the nuances of people’s explanations and examining how these do (or do not) reflect theory and research on ASB.

The quality of life rationale

Perhaps the most straightforward rationale for tackling ASB is that ASB has a severe impact on the quality of life of those most affected by it: it can make people unhappy in a general sense and, more specifically, it can create or exacerbate fear of crime. This is the primary rationale for tackling ASB to be found in government literature – to use the language of Respect, ASB ‘ruins lives’.

The quality of life rationale: theoretical perspectives

Some of the earliest American research literature on disorder focused on the links between disorder and fear of crime. According to Taylor (1999), an early version of what he terms the ‘incivilities thesis’ was developed by Wilson (1975) and Garofalo and Laub (1978), who argued that various incidents of minor disorder can inspire fear of crime among urban residents. The key idea here was that ‘urban conditions, not just crime, are troublesome and inspire residents’ concern for safety’ (Taylor, 1999: 66).

The particular impact of disorder on people’s sense of insecurity is a theme with which Innes and colleagues are concerned (Innes et al, 2002; Innes, 2004a; 2004b; Innes et al, 2005). This relationship between disorder and fear of crime is at the heart of their work on ‘signal crimes’, which posits that certain crimes or disorderly incidents may be ‘disproportionately influential in terms of causing a person or persons to perceive themselves to be at risk in some sense’ (Innes and Fielding, 2002: 17). Incidents that have ‘signal value’ may include both ‘high profile serious crimes where the public reaction to the event is based upon mediated information’, and also ‘less serious events which are nonetheless significant due to them being experienced directly’ (Innes et al, 2002: 19).

The quality of life rationale: policy perspectives

The impact of ASB on quality of life is a theme that frequently emerges in current policy thinking on ASB. The relationship between ASB and fear of crime is emphasised in the policy literature. Fear of crime is assumed to have a great significance in itself, since ‘it is fear of crime – rather than actually being a victim – that can so often limit people’s lives, making them feel afraid of going out or even afraid in their own homes’ (Home Office, 2003: 13). In the UK the concern with fear of crime has informed the reassurance policing agenda,4 which recognises ‘that people are not reassured by crime reduction alone and look for credible control of their environment, in addition to safety from crime and incivility’ (ACPO, 2002: 8).

The quality of life rationale: local perspectives

Many of our respondents in the case study sites argued that ASB must be addressed because of the unhappiness it causes. While some suggested that a sizeable proportion of public complaints about ASB might be regarded as evidence of the increasing ‘intolerance’ of older people towards children and young people, they nevertheless pointed out that many lives are being made increasingly unpleasant and difficult by the thoughtlessness or malice of others. The head of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit in Lonborough, for example, argued that ‘the greatest harm [of ASB] is that it makes vulnerable members of society more vulnerable, and more excluded’. And a manager of the local warden schemes in Lonborough spoke at some length about how problems such as neighbour disputes over noise can, in the long term, cause serious damage to physical and mental health. Ultimately, she said, such problems can make people feel extremely unhappy and insecure even within the four walls of their own homes.

More specifically, the impact of ASB on fear of crime was frequently discussed in the CDRP interviews. This issue was strongly emphasised in Prospertown, for example, a low crime area in which anxieties about crime nevertheless remain high. A Prospertown police officer commented on: ‘their actual perception that, by the fact they see graffiti they think that cars are getting broken into, there’s burglary, it’s like a city of crime really’. It was also pointed out that not only do incidents of ASB provoke fear of crime but, conversely, existing fear and anxiety can shape perceptions of ASB. This is particularly true with regard to older people’s reactions to young people congregating in public places. A local Councillor in Newtown commented:

I’ve done it myself – you see a group of youths standing about… and they’re laughing and talking, and they’re being loud the way young people are, and you immediately see them as threatening. And for people a lot older than myself they find young people today… very, very intimidating, and then they think they’re going to be following them home and they’re going to attack them. The fact that it very rarely happens is neither here nor there.

The ways in which public concerns about crime and ASB feed into and reinforce each other were highlighted also by the ASB coordinator in Westerncity. He commented that the preoccupation of the public with ASB is such that the concept of criminality has broadened and become all-encompassing:

they [young people] are sitting in a park at night – they’ve got to be doing something, they’ve got to be causing damage, they’ve got to be littering. They can’t just be sitting there. So I think anti-social behaviour is altering perceptions of crime.

The ‘broken windows’ rationale

The ‘broken windows’ rationale for tackling ASB assumes that there is a particular causal link between disorder, or ASB, and crime in that, if left unattended, minor disorder leads to major crime. This has proved a highly popular view within policy circles in both the United States and Britain.

The ‘broken windows’ rationale: theoretical perspectives

In the United States, earlier ideas about the links between disorder and fear of crime were developed into the ‘broken windows’ thesis outlined by Wilson and Kelling in their famous 1982 article in Atlantic Monthly. Wilson and Kelling argue that disorder can provoke fear; and, further, that the fear can itself help to create the physical and social environment in which real crime will flourish. This is because residents who are fearful are likely to withdraw from public spaces and will not intervene when they observe disorderly or criminal behaviour. Informal social controls over an area are thus relaxed; local troublemakers and offenders become bolder in their actions; and offenders from outside the area are attracted to it. Wilson and Kelling’s thinking on these issues was clearly influenced by Jacobs (1961), who wrote of the need for ‘casual enforcement of civilisation’ if the streets are to remain safe, and by Newman’s work on defensible space (1972).

Hence, ‘disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence’ (Wilson and Kelling, 1982). The process by which disorder leads to fear and crime is symbolised by the broken window. Wilson and Kelling argue that if a broken window in a building remains unrepaired, all the other windows in the building will soon also be broken, because ‘one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun)’.

The ‘broken windows’ rationale: policy perspectives

Over the 25 years since the Atlantic Monthly article was first published, the relationship between disorder and crime posited by Wilson and Kelling has been extensively explored and debated by criminologists – with results that, when viewed as a whole, are inconclusive. There is little question that areas with high levels of crime also suffer from ASB. At issue, however, is whether the latter triggers the former in the way claimed by Wilson and Kelling. Despite only weak evidence to this effect, the theory has been highly influential in policy as well as research circles – largely as a result of its intuitive appeal. In terms of its impact on policing, it has proved to be ‘a coat of many colors’ (Taylor, 2005), that is, subject to differing interpretations and used to justify a range of approaches to crime and disorder.

In Britain, ‘broken windows’ theory is cited with great frequency as a rationale – or indeed an almost irrefutable justification – for a host of policing and crime-prevention measures that target ASB. At the start of the chapter, we quoted from the Respect website, which claims that ASB ‘creates an environment where more serious crime can take hold’. This line of argument was prominent in the (2003) government White Paper on ASB, under the heading ‘The spiral of anti-social behaviour’, directly echoing ‘broken windows’ theory:

If a window is broken or a wall is covered in graffiti it can contribute to an environment in which crimes takes hold, particularly if intervention is not prompt and effective. An abandoned car, left for days on end, soon becomes a burnt-out car; it is not long before more damage and vandalism takes place. Environmental decline, anti-social behaviour and crime go hand in hand and create a sense of helplessness that nothing can be done. (Home Office, 2003: 14)

The ‘broken windows’ rationale: local perspectives

Despite the enthusiasm for the ‘broken windows’ thesis at national policy level, its endorsement was less than wholehearted in our five case study sites. For example, in Prospertown one local authority officer cited ‘broken windows’ theory with only qualified approval, arguing that the link between ASB and crime is not always clear. In Northport, some respondents did make reference to the need to tackle ASB in order to break the cycle of fear of crime, crime and neighbourhood decline. Others, however, argued that they did not regard ASB work as a means of crime reduction; rather, they wanted to tackle ASB in response to public demand, and also as part of a much wider and longer-term programme of social and economic regeneration.

It was in Westerncity that there was the clearest articulation of a ‘broken windows’ type of agenda. Here, a police superintendent directly referred to ‘broken windows’ theory and talked about the way in which serious crime can take hold in a community following minor incidents of criminal damage and ASB. A police sergeant highlighted the role played by fear of crime in this kind of cycle of decline, arguing that ASB can provoke fear of crime, which in turn keeps people away from an area and weakens natural surveillance.

In Lonborough and, to a lesser extent, in Newtown, Westerncity and Prospertown, various respondents spoke about links between ASB and crime in terms of the development of criminal careers rather than in terms of neighbourhood change (see for example Farrington, 1992). They argued that many people – particularly children and young people – who engage in relatively minor ASB are likely to move on to more serious forms of misbehaviour, and ultimately criminal behaviour, in the absence of intervention.

This ‘criminal careers’ perspective on the links between crime and ASB does not necessarily contradict the central tenets of ‘broken windows’ theory; but the latter theory is much more concerned with changing patterns of crime in neighbourhoods than with the evolution of criminal behaviour in individuals...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: why ‘anti-social behaviour’? Debating ASBOs
• Part One: Managing anti-social behaviour: priorities and approaches
• Part Two: Anti-social behaviour management: emerging issues
• Part Three: Anti-social behaviour case studies: particular social groups affected by anti-social behaviour policies
• Part Four: Anti-ASBO: criticising the ASBO industry