6-2 The War on Civility

The War on Civility

Britain's latest crime worry is anti-social behaviour. It's hard to define—and even harder to police

Are those uncouth teenagers hanging around on the street corner just going through a difficult phase, or are they chipping away at the foundations of decent society? The tendency these days is to think the worst. “Our country faces two major threats”, says Frank Field, a Labour MP and a veteran crusader against anti-social behaviour. “One comes from international terrorism, the other from neighbourhood terrorists.”

A decade ago, people worried about tangible crimes like burglary and car theft. As figures released last month showed, those are now in remission. But the overall level of anxiety appears not to have diminished at all. In the kind of psychological shift that unnerves governments, public worries now focus sharply on petty incivilities like vandalism, loud music and public loutishness.

The need to crack down on such annoyances was the main theme of two speeches this week by the prime minister, and David Blunkett, the home secretary. It was also the chief spur to plans to put 12,000 more police on the streets in the next four years, along with 20,000 extra community-support officers.

The war against anti-social behaviour may have been formally declared this week, but it has been heating up for the past few years. The state's arsenal starts, softly, with “acceptable behaviour contracts”, first introduced in 1999, in which tearaways promise to calm down. Should they fail to do so, they are liable to be slapped with an “anti-social behaviour order” (ASBO)—a list of prohibitions, issued by a magistrate, which may prevent them doing uncivil things, hanging out with known troublemakers, or even visiting their favourite stomping grounds. A petty tyrant who steps out of line is liable to spend up to six months in prison.

Such remedies are draconian, particularly given that vandalism—the most measurable kind of anti-social behaviour—has been declining for years (see chart). Even coppers are surprised. “I never thought I would live in a country where the police would have these powers,” says Stuart Chapman, a chief superintendent from the South Yorkshire force.

The powers are also virtually unique. Other countries fret about youthful misdeeds, but mostly because they are thought to lead on to more serious stuff. In America, the fear about teenagers hanging around the streets is that they will get sucked into gangs. There, as in much of continental Europe, a distinction is drawn between minor indiscretions, which are dealt with through informal negotiation or community sanctions, and criminal offences, which lead to custodial sentences.

Britain's innovation is to have criminalised behaviour that is not necessarily an offence in law. To obtain an ASBO, local authorities and the police do not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an offence has been committed. They only have to establish, on the balance of probabilities, that the local lout is making other people's lives difficult. That is fairly easy, which explains why, of the 2,497 orders sought before the end of last month, only 42 were refused. But while civil standards of proof apply to the issuing of ASBOs, criminal sanctions can be applied to those who break them. And they can be handed out for anything, from egging houses to dealing in drugs. Kate Hammond, a specialist prosecutor in Manchester, says, mildly: “It's quite a large stick.”