Book Review: Making People Behave: Anti-Social Behaviour, Politics and Policy

DOI10.1177/1362480606065915
AuthorEmily Gray
Date01 August 2006
Published date01 August 2006
Subject MatterArticles
Elizabeth Burney
Making People Behave: Anti-Social Behaviour, Politics and Policy
Devon: Willan Publishing, 2005. viii + 200 pp. £17.99 (pbk). ISBN
1843921375.
Reviewed by Emily Gray, Keele University, UK
DOI: 10.1177/1362480606065915
Such an ambitious titleMaking People Behaveraises ones expectations.
While this publication does not put forward a solution for anti-social behavi-
our (ASB), the title nicely captures what is really at stake here, behave or else!
In it, Elizabeth Burney critically examines the political motivations and ante-
cedents for the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO) and related techniques.
Looking to the broader forces of politics and policy she also considers,
somewhat brief‌ly, the deeper social explanations for the anxiety expressed
about ASB. As the title suggests, the emphasis here is on politics and policy and
unfortunately, in this vastly under-researched area, it does not showcase any
substantial empirical evidence or theoretical development. There are two
chapters that introduce new research, but these are small-scale analyses; f‌ifteen
interviews with practitioners in the Netherlands and Sweden and a comparison
of two case study areas in the UK.
The book begins by examining how the concept of ASB has come to
dominate Britains law and order discourse. Until relatively recently, ASB was a
professional term used either in a clinical context by psychologists or criminol-
ogists. Burney summarizes the explanations for the international shift towards
more punitive penal cultures which have given rise to tough law and order
stances, most notably under the leadership of President Clinton and Mayor
Giulani in New York where stringent policing of incivilities and a zero
tolerance approach appeared to deliver results. Back in Britain, she then
contends that the rise in ASB policy was legitimized through a community
safety agenda. Despite the evidence that peoples fear of crime may have been
overstated (Farrall and Gadd, 2005), and irrespective of evidence that suggests
the weak foundation for the sequential aspect of the broken windows claim
that social and physical disorder causes a subsequent spurt in predatory crime
(see Skogan, 1990), New Labour has given the police and local authorities
more power than ever before to manage public disorder.
Following a concise, perhaps f‌leeting, interlude into the history of behaviour
control where Burney describes how penal policy has consistently sought fresh
methods for dealing with the undeserving poor, the book moves on to the
important question of whether it is possible to say that disorderly behaviour
has actually increased signif‌icantly over recent years. While there are un-
doubtedly neighbourhoods in which ASB impacts on the quality of life and
perpetrators of serious social disorder who should be brought within the arms
of the law, Burney is not able convincingly to answer the question of whether
the asserted rise in ASB is a myth, cliché or fact. This is partly a methodological
Book Reviews 393

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