Dispersal Powers and the Symbolic Role of Anti‐Social Behaviour Legislation

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2008.00714.x
AuthorAdam Crawford
Published date01 September 2008
Date01 September 2008
DispersalPowersandtheSymbolicRoleofAnti-Social
Behaviour Legislation
Adam C rawf ord
n
This article considers the development and use of dispersal powers, introduced by the Anti-Social
BehaviourAct 20 03,and situates these with in the context of wider legislation and policy initia-
tives. It explores the ways in which the powers have been interpreted by the courts and imple-
mented by police and local authorities.The article critically analyses the manner in which the
powers:introduce ‘publicperceptions’as a justi¢cation for police e ncroachmentson civil liberties;
conform to a hybrid-type prohibition; constitute a form of preventive exclusion that seeks to
govern future behaviour; are part of a wider trend towards discretionary and summary justice;
and potentiallycrimi nalise young people on the basis of the anxieties that groups congregating in
public places may generate amongst others. It is argued that the signi¢cance of dispersal orders
derives as muchfrom the symbolic messages and communicativeproperties they express, as from
their instrumental capacity to regulate behaviour.
INTRODUCTION
Anti-social beh aviour has become a major policy preoccupation in recent years
and has provided the fertile terrain outof which considerable legal and regulatory
innovations have grown. Anti-socialbehaviour hascome to comprise and deline-
ate a distinctive, if capacious and ill-de¢ned, ¢eld that blurs and transcends tradi-
tional di¡erentiationsbetween crime and disorder. In the process, it has re¢gured
and (con)fused civil and criminal legal processes and principles, as well as
muddied the relation between formal and informal regulatory responses. In
practice, interventions for tackling anti-social behaviour comprise a policy
domain in which diverse organisational interests, workingassumptions, priorities
and multi-disciplinary approaches coalesce, often in awkward combinations.
Despite their apparent generic implications, the new laws, technologies and
strategies brought into being by anti-social b ehaviour legislation, are concerned,
above all else, with the question of governing‘troublesome youth’.
1
The extensive array of new powers, inter alia, acceptable behaviour contracts
(ABCs), anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), parenting orders, parenting
contracts, tenancy demotion orders, anti-social behaviour housing injunctions
(ASBIs), ‘crack-house’ closure orders, designated public places orders (DPPOs),
n
Director of the Centrefor Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, Universityof Leeds. I wouldlike
to thank Stuart Lister and Christopher Carney for their work on the empirical study on which this
paper drawsa nd the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for funding the research. I am also grateful for the
valuable comments and suggestions of the anonymousreviewers.
1SeeE.Burney,Making PeopleBehave: Anti-social Behaviour,Politicsa ndPolicy (Cullompton:Willan,
2005);P.Squires and D. E.Stephen, RougherJustice: Anti-socialBehaviour andYoungPeople (Cullomp-
ton:Willan, 2005); and A. Crawford, Governing theFuture:TheContractualGovernance ofAnti-Social
Behaviour (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, forthcoming).
r2008 The Author.Journal Compilation r2008 The Modern Law Review Limited.
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(2008) 71(5) 753^784
dispersal orders and penalty notices for disorder (PND), as well as the latest
proposals for premise closure orders and ‘deferred’ PNDs.
2
As this list testi¢es,
the hyper-active reform agenda has seen the creation of new institutional tools
and legal powers andtheir equally freneticextension and replacement by alterna-
tives and supplements. Such has been the pace of change that it has allowed little
time or space for consideration of the impact of new technologies and prohibi-
tions or for informed analysis. To date, much of the critical commentary has
focused on the ASBO and has largely been directed at the rhetoric rather than
on evidence of what the impacts of the new policies have actually been.
3
This
has been exacerbated by the fact that government has explicitly preferred not to
fund signi¢cant ordetailed evaluations, but instead has restricted oversight to the
collection of limited data on the use of powers via annual surveys and the crude
monitoring of public perceptions. This willful neglect of evaluation and close
monitoring of the impact of the anti-social behaviour agenda was roundly con-
demned by the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts.
4
The available research has largely highlighted the signi¢cant use of ASBOs
with juveniles (over 40 per cent), their high breach rate, the growing use
of ASBOs attached to a criminal conviction (more than 60 per cent) and the
variable use of di¡erent powers across the country, largelydue to local preferences
for particular approaches rather than re£ecting di¡erences in types of behaviour.
5
This ‘justice by geography’ underscores both the discretionary nature of
the powers and the subjective interpretation they invest in local enforcement
o⁄cers.
Both collectively and individually, many of the new modes of control
representa shifting orientationtowardsforms of governance andbehaviouralreg-
ulation that focus less on knowing and accounting for past incidences than
disrupting, reordering and steering possible futures. They seek to regulate crime
and disorder through their consequences for, and interconnections with, wider
social problems. Simultaneously, they re£ect an individualisation of control, in
which responses are tailored around personal and contextual characteristics. In
the process of ‘rebalancing justice’, as deemed necessary by the current govern-
ment to‘ensure 21st centurylaws for 21st century crimes,
6
therehasbeenasubtle
shift from due process requirements as de¢ning ideals of justice to security
and public perceptions as predominant overarching narratives. In this article, it is
not my intention to review the full panoply of new powers but to focus on
one particularly controversial, but little discussed, legal innovation, namely
2 As outl ined in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
3 D. Smith,‘New Labourand Youth Justice’(2003) 17 Children & Society226, 233.
4 In the absence of evaluation it ass erted that: ‘Decisions are based on local preferences and the
familiarity of those in authority with the di¡erent types of measures, rather than an objective
assessment of whatworks with di¡erent types of perpetrators’;s ee House of Commons Commit-
tee of Public Accounts,Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour,Forty-fourth reportof Session 2006^7HC 246
(London: Stationery O⁄ce,2007) 5.
5 National Audit O⁄ce,The HomeO⁄ce:TacklingAnti-Social Behaviour, (London: NAO, 2006); and
A.-R. Solanki,T. Bateman, G. Boswell and E.Hi ll, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (London:Youth
Justice Board, 2006).
6HomeOce,Rebalancing the CriminalJustice System in Favour of the LawAbiding Majority: Cutting
Crime, ReducingReo¡endingand Protectingthe Public (London: HomeO⁄ce, 2006) 11.
Dispersal Powers
754 r2008 The Author. Journal Compilation r2008 The Modern Law ReviewLimited.
(2008) 71(5) 753^784
dispersal powers introduced by section 30 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act
2003. The powers are inherentlycontentious, given the wide scope of discretion
they accord to police and the infri ngements on the rights of individuals to
free movement and assembly that they entail. My intention here is to use the
dispersal order as a vantage point from which to assess some of the wider
implications of anti-social behaviourlegislation.
This article draws on the ¢rst major empirical study of the use and impact of
dispersal powers.
7
Conducted over a12 month period from April 2006 to March
2007, the research gathered data from three main sources. The ¢rst entailed a
national overview of practice drawn from interviews conducted with
practitioners from 13 police force areas across the UK, as well as national
policy-makers. The second concerned two city-based studies in She⁄eld and
Leeds, and explored the development of strategies over time, the distribution of
orders across a city and longer-term impacts. In support of thi s, interviews were
conducted with police, local authority sta¡ and others involved in the implemen-
tationof dispersal orderssince their introduction.The third sourcefocused on two
case study sites in North Yorkshire and Outer London. In each a six-month
dispersal order was investigated from instigation to completion. Surveys and
focus groups were conducted with adult residents and pupils attending a local
school, and interviews took place with key stakeholders and police. Police
enforcement practices were observed.
8
It will be argued that the signi¢cance of dispersal orders derives in large part
from thesymbolic messages andcommunicative propertiesthey express,as much
as from theirinstrumental capacity to regulate behaviour.This, it is suggested, is a
de¢ning attribute of much recent anti-social behaviourlegislation, wherebycon-
veying the message that certain misconduct is being taken seriously by relevant
legal authorities and thatsomething is beingdone in response, is more salient than
the appropriateness or e¡ectiveness of the course of action taken. It re£ects a pre-
occupation in which the ambitions of governing and state-craft have narrowed to
a focus on individual behaviour as the crucible in which the fortunes of govern-
mentareforged.Inthefaceofuncontrollablowsofcapital,goods,peopleand
risks, governments (both local and national) have re-sighted their energies onthe
management of public displays of behaviour. Being seen to be doing something
tangible in response to local demands and to assuage public perceptions via the
micro-management of uncivil behaviour has become an increasingly prominent
governmentalra ison d’eŒtre.
The research evidence, however, suggests the messages that dispersal orders
impart todi¡erent audiences areboth mixed and often counterproductive, simul-
taneouslyraising expectationsabout policing prioritiesand reinforcing dominant
adult assumptions aboutyoung people.The research reveals a signi¢cant disjunc-
ture between the potential scope of the law and the more circumscribed manner
in which ithas generally been interpreted by thepolice. However, this dissonance
7 A. Crawford and S.Lister,The Use and Impact ofDispersalOrders:Sticking PlastersandWake-Up Calls
(Bristol: Policy Press,2007).
8 The research study was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the absence of any Home
O⁄ce sponsored evaluations. For further information on the research methodss ee ibid,8.
Adam Crawford
755
r2008 The Author.Journal Compilation r2008 The Modern Law Review Limited.
(2008) 71(5) 753^784

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT