Implementing the Youth 'Anti-social Behaviour' Agenda: Policing the Ashton Estate
| Published date | 01 April 2008 |
| Date | 01 April 2008 |
| Author | Joanna Sadler |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225407087042 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A R T I C L E
Copyright © 2008 The National Association for Youth Justice
Published by SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1473–2254, Vol 8(1): 57–73
DOI: 10.1177/1473225407087042
Implementing the Youth ‘Anti-social Behaviour’
Agenda: Policing the Ashton Estate
Joanna Sadler
Correspondence: Dr. Joanna Sadler, c/o Independent Police Complaints Commission,
90 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6BH, UK.1 Email: Joanna.Sadler@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk
Abstract
The article presents fi ndings of a doctoral research project that examined the implementation of
legislation targeted at youth ‘anti-social behaviour’, which began with the Crime and Disorder
Act 1998 (Sadler, 2004). A 2-year ethnographic case study examined the implementation
of the legislation on an inner city housing estate in England, and the broader effects of the
contemporary ‘youth “anti-social behaviour” agenda’ on local policing. Pseudonyms have been
used throughout the article to preserve the anonymity of people and places. The research found
that increasing knowledge about the legislation among local services involved in community
safety, intensifi ed the ways in which young people congregating in the estate’s public spaces
were problematized and policed. In turn, this began to exacerbate already fragile police–youth
relationships and encouraged feelings of stigmatization and social exclusion among local young
people.
Keywords: anti-social behaviour, policing, social exclusion, young people
Introduction
Today, if you open a newspaper, watch the news, read a political party manifesto, or
visit a local council offi ce, it is hard to avoid reading or hearing about ‘anti-social
behaviour’ (‘asb’). The term ‘ASBO’ – the acronym for ‘anti-social behaviour order’ –
has even been included in the latest edition of the Collins English Dictionary (Hills,
2005: 21). Local and national newspapers – both broadsheets and tabloids – regularly
include stories of ASBOs and so-called ‘yob culture’. On 31 March 2006, the newspaper
Metro reported increasingly bizarre uses of ASBOs, including for a compulsive rubbish
collector, a ‘petrol drinker’, and a twenty-eight year-old male who liked to howl like a
werewolf outside his home (Hills, 2006: 13). The prevalence of the term ‘ASBO’ has
even been refl ected in the nation’s television soap operas and gossip magazines. In one
episode of the BBC’s Eastenders, (14 April 2005), Garry Hobbs responded to being
woken up in the middle of the night (by noise outside) exclaiming, ‘I tell you, if I fi nd
out who that is I’ll get an ASBO on them!’ Likewise, the May 2006 edition of New
Woman magazine awarded a ‘Fashion ASBO’ to the most badly dressed celebrity (Anon,
2006: 16).
58
Youth Justice 8(1)
ASBOs are a core feature of contemporary political concern with ‘anti-social be-
haviour’ that was launched by the New Labour Government’s Crime and Disorder Act
1998. Under the legislation, ASBOs, local child curfew schemes, parenting orders, child
safety orders and police powers to take truants back to their schools, were all intended
to deal with ‘non-criminal’ or ‘sub-criminal’ behaviour,2 both because of the ‘quality
of life’ effects of the behaviour itself, and the perceived risk that it could develop into
crime. In this way a focus on ‘asb’ can be compared to Wilson and Kelling’s (1982)
‘broken windows’ thesis, and the zero-tolerance policing measures that it has encouraged
(Young, 1999).
The plethora of new interventions are particularly focused upon children and young
people3 and aim to regulate them spatially (where they can be) and socially (what they
can do there). That the legislation defi nes ‘anti-social behaviour’ as the causation or
likely causation of ‘harassment, alarm or distress’4 renders it open to wide-ranging inter-
pretation, providing seemingly limitless opportunities for its identifi cation, and sub-
sequent intervention. In a Home Offi ce research study into the progress of ASBOs,
Campbell (2002:13) listed the range of behaviours for which they have so far been used,
including ambiguous terms such as ‘threats’, ‘noise’ and ‘intimidation’, as well as defi ned
criminal acts such as ‘assault’ and ‘graffi ti and criminal damage’. Likewise, offi cial ASBO
guidance lists types of behaviours including ‘general loutish and unruly conduct’ as well
as ‘racial harassment, drunk and disorderly behaviour, throwing missiles, vehicle crime
and prostitution’ (Home Offi ce, 2003: 12).
It is the ambiguity around defi nitions of ‘asb’, and its blurred distinction from
‘crime’ that makes the legislation so signifi cant, and this is why throughout this article
quotation marks are given when using the term (apart from when quoting its use by
someone else), to continue to render it problematic. Card and Ward (1998: 3), there-
fore, viewed the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 as delivering the party’s pledge to be
‘Tough on crime; tough on the causes of crime’ ‘by widening the reach of the law and
strengthening the criminal justice process against juveniles’. Moreover, Waiton (2001: 15)
observes that ‘under the banner of attacking antisocial [sic] behaviour’ New Labour ‘has
gone further than previous governments ever dared in criminalizing more and more
areas of life’ (see also Brown, 1998: 75).
This article presents the fi ndings of a doctoral research project, which set out to exam-
ine the implementation of the youth ‘anti-social behaviour’ legislation and, more broadly,
the effects of this ‘agenda’ on the everyday policing of young people. It focused on a
detailed ethnographic case study of policing on a housing estate in an inner city area in
England. The aim was to explore how the criminalization of a seemingly endless range of
behaviours, in the form of the new legislation, was affecting the ground level policing
of young people. In order to set the context of the research, the article continues with a
brief discussion of the key features of, and recent developments in, the youth ‘anti-social
behaviour’ legislation. It then provides a detailed overview of the research fi ndings.
Key Developments in the Youth ‘Anti-social Behaviour’ Legislation
Since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the political concern with ‘anti-social be-
haviour’ has spiralled. The Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, which the national
Sadler – Implementing the Youth ‘Anti-social Behaviour’ Agenda
59
media dubbed as a response to ‘yob culture’,5 introduced powers for the police to give
penalty notices for offences including ‘disorderly behaviour while drunk in a public
place’.6 The Police Reform Act 2002 extended the powers to implement ASBOs to
British Transport Police and Registered Social Landlords, and also enabled interim
orders, and ‘bolt-on’ orders or ‘CRASBOs’ following a criminal conviction. The youth
‘anti-social behaviour’ agenda has also led to the development of local initiatives, in-
cluding Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs), originally designed to ‘tackle anti-
social behaviour on Islington Council estates, particularly among teenagers’ (Islington
Borough Police and Islington Council, 2001: 1).
More recently, the police have been provided with further powers under the Anti-
social Behaviour Act 2003, including for the ‘dispersal of groups and removal of persons
under 16 to their place of residence’ in designated areas where ‘members of the public
have been intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed as a result of the presence or be-
haviour of groups of two or more persons in public places’ (Section 30, subsection 1). In
2003 the Home Offi ce also launched their ‘Together’ campaign, centred upon a website
that provides support and information to practitioners and members of the public, to
tackle ‘asb’.
While the most striking point about the ‘anti-social behaviour’ legislation is the lack
of a clear defi nition of what it targets, several key themes run through the accompany-
ing Home Offi ce guidance, especially that for ASBOs.7 Two of these are particularly
signifi cant. In the original guidance a specifi c link with young people was made,
particularly in some examples that it outlined, of where an ASBO might be appropriate.
These included
… where there is persistent unruly behaviour by a small group of individuals on a housing
estate or other local area, who may dominate others and use minor damage to property
and fear of retaliation, possibly at unsociable hours, as a means of intimidating other
people…’ and ‘where there are families whose anti-social behaviour, when challenged
leads to verbal abuse, vandalism, threats and graffi ti, sometimes using the children as the
vehicle for action against neighbouring families.
(Home Offi ce, 1999: 7)
The former has inherent associations with young people as they are most commonly
identifi ed with ‘hanging around’ in groups and becoming involved in vandalism (see
Pearson, 1983; Muncie, 1999a; Cohen, 1972). The examples also draw on particular
ideas about the location of ‘asb’, especially housing estates, and this is also implied in a
discussion of ABCs, in more recent guidance, which states that they were ‘originally
introduced to deal with problems on estates being caused by young people aged between
10 and 17’(Home Offi ce, 2003: 8). This is in accordance with contemporary trends in
crime prevention, which Goldson (1999: 14) suggests focus on the ‘problem area’ and
‘crime-prone estate’.
In the light of these assertions about the location of ‘asb’ and...
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