This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the case law governing the imposition of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). It demonstrates first that the grounds for imposing an order are defined as any conduct that manifests a disposition that fails to reassure others about their security; and second that a finding of liability to an order is best understood as the exercise of a power in administrative law to make a risk assessment and preventive order rather than to impose a punishment. This analysis is deployed to critique the theory that the ASBO is a punishment for morally offensive behaviour.
This chapter provides detailed analysis of the case law on the criminal offence of breach of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). It demonstrates first, that the offence converts the conduct manifesting the unreassuring disposition that grounds liability to an ASBO from a threat to be controlled by a court order into a public wrong to be punished; and, second, that the penal wrong that the offence defines is, therefore, a wrong of dangerousness. This analysis is deployed to critique the theory that breach of ASBO is a criminal offence that serves to composite many minor offences for the purposes of punishment.
This chapter considers what is distinctive about the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) by comparing it with Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. It shows that the ASBO penalizes not individual acts that fail to reassure but any manifestation of a disposition to do so by showing that the ASBO imposes a subtle positive obligation of active citizenship and marks those who fail to fulfil this obligation as a second-class citizen by the reduction of their civil rights; by reviewing the controversy over the ASBO's procedure in order to demonstrate that the ASBO protects a right to freedom from fear; by demonstrating that the Coalition government's proposed reforms to the ASBO impose the same substantive liability as an ASBO; and also by explaining why the ASBO's protection of freedom from fear can be described as a right to security.
One of the hallmarks of New Labour's campaign on crime was their attempt to crack down on what they call ‘anti-social behaviour’. This catch-all phrase lit up the statute books in 1998, when Section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act created a new order [the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO)] which was designed to deal with the relatively trivial but persistent problem of anti-social behaviour; that is, behaviour which may fall short of criminality but is nevertheless a social nuisance. Section 4 of the Act deals with the dispersal of groups of any age whose behaviour in public places is harassing, alarming, or distressing. Far too many ASBOs have been imposed on learning-disabled young people: estimates put the proportion as high as a third of such orders. Because ASBOs restrict space, they can be seen as an example of conflict over territory. This chapter challenges some manifestly outdated assumptions about the nature of group behaviour, and looks at some of the implications of these orders, for example the criminogenic effects of ‘grounding’ young people.
The United Kingdom's Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) was enacted by the UK Parliament in the Crime and Disorder Act of 1998. It provided local authorities and police forces with a sweeping power to control behavior. This chapter explores the specific elements of continuity and change in police power that are to be found in relation to the ASBO. As a power of social control, the ASBO stands in a functional position adjacent to and overlapping with that occupied for more than a millennium by another legal power, latterly known as the bind over. But the ASBO's substantive terms and explicit rationale are quite different from that of the ancient power. The chapter explores these differences and considers their implications for the “new science of police”.
After describing New Labour's use of 'the child' as a form of human capital in social investment, and its penal ASBO programme as a breeding ground for childism, the chapter focuses on the government's innovatory ideal of disciplinary governance, encoded in neoliberal practice, to explain how, with reference to parent education, the behavioural approach to child-rearing grew to be regarded as normal and natural. The chapter discusses Supernanny, the reality television show, as an example of how, through the principles of narcissism, behaviourism and childism were popularised. The chapter argues that the effect of the neoliberal parenting industry on parent-child relations has been to negate the 'unconditional' in parental love in preference to a managerial and contractual approach that epitomises the general principles of neoliberalism and the specifics of the narcissistic temperament.