July 29, 2010
Abolishing ASBOs
The Coalition is abolishing ASBOs. This is a good thing. Not (necessarily) because ASBOs are frequently ignored, or allegedly worn as “badges of honour” by feral yoofs. But because they exemplified some of the worst aspects of New Labour.
As I’ve previously commented much of New Labour’s approach to society was rooted in American-style communitarian thinking, in part due to emulating Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” strategy. This was clearest in Blair’s (then Brown’s) rhetoric of “rights and responsibilities”.
As previously argued the NewLab approach to society was deeply opposed to a philosophically liberal (and I’d say, preferable) view of citizen rights.
For (philosophical) liberals, citizens have rights just because they are citizens. These rights act as checks and constraints on state power. Rights certainly correlate to duties and responsibilities – but these duties and responsibilities fall incumbent upon other agents apart from the right-holder, including the state. So for example if I have a right to association, the responsibility is on you to not stop me freely associating.
The communitarian Blair-Brown view was different. It held that you only had rights if you proved you were “responsible” enough to deserve them. With “responsible” defined by the state. Rights were things only good boys and girls had; naughty boys and girls refusing to play nicely alienated or failed to achieve their rights. New Labour’s much-commented-upon authoritarianism and distrust of the individual arguably stemmed from this basic picture of the state-citizen relationship.
This all fit extremely well with media-management and centre-ground squatting designed to steal Daily Mail and Sun votes from under the Tories’ noses. Implying that pikeys, chavs, gypos and other undesirables shouldn’t get any rights until they behaved nicely was certainly a vote winner. That a mentality which made citizens dependent upon the state quickly led to the mass erosion of civil liberties didn’t particularly bother the New Labour leadership. Which was unsurprising, given that their dominant philosophy implied that they were personally doing ordinary people a favour by allowing them to have any rights at all.
Into all this ASBOs fitted perfectly. For a start, look at the name: anti-social behaviour order. Under New Labour you no longer needed to commit a full-blown crime to attract the attention and chastisement of the state, your behaviour simply had to be anti-social. Anti-social, defined by who? By “the community”, or rather its dominant power-wielding individuals and their dominant prejudices, wherever it was you happened to be acting “anti-socially”.
There’s no denying that ASBOs were often meted out to particularly unpleasant and problematic individuals. But their creation signalled the institution of a new form of quasi-crime that could be usefully applied against (typically) the working class poor. In sum: a Daily Mail crowd-pleaser that exemplified New Labour’s worst communitarian attitudes towards the status of the individual in society and his or her relationship to the wielders of organised power.
Commentators have been arguing that something needs to fill the gap between “a stern telling off from the local bobby” and a criminal conviction, which ASBOs allegedly achieved. Apart from pointing out that the police can already administer cautions, I’m really not sure I agree.
As a squealing leftie, I reckon a more effective long-term solution than slapping people with resentment-inducing punishments is to remove the poverty, desperation and boredom that underlie the vast majority of low-level crime and nuisance-making. You know, “Tough on the Causes of Crime”. That second part of their clever slogan which New Labour so quickly forgot when scraping the bottom of the barrel for votes.
Simon said,
July 29, 2010 at 8:34 am
“So for example if I have a right to association, the responsibility is on you to not stop me freely associating.”
I’m not sure about that. I don’t have the right to stop your free association, which isn’t the same as saying I have a responsibility not to stop you. That implies I have to make a positive decision not not stop you and then do something, which I don’t; I must do nothing.
All that is predicated on your right not being used to curtail my right to free association.
Thrasymachus said,
July 29, 2010 at 9:47 am
Great post. I remember being in school when all the ‘you have a right to do this, but you also have a responsibility to do this’ BS was being rolled out. Quite apart from how it’s been adopted as a pejorative label against the marginalized (hey, I guess being poor is anti-social) it’s just patronizing tripe.
donpaskini said,
July 29, 2010 at 10:04 am
“I reckon a more effective long-term solution than slapping people with resentment-inducing punishments is to remove the poverty, desperation and boredom that underlie the vast majority of low-level crime and nuisance-making. You know, “Tough on the Causes of Crime”. That second part of their clever slogan which New Labour so quickly forgot when scraping the bottom of the barrel for votes.”
Really? Crime fell by 43% under Labour, Labour invested lots of money in everything from reducing child poverty to diversionary youth activities to neighbourhood policing teams to help for people when they left prison. They could (and should) have spent and done even more than they did, but it is not plausible to argue that they just forgot about tackling the causes of crime.
And alongside investment to cut crime in the long term, there does need to be some kind of solution in the short term when someone is making their neighbour’s lives a misery. If you’ve got a better alternative to Asbos then let’s hear it, but the government’s approach is to take away all of the things that Labour did to tackle both crime and the causes of crime.
Paul Sagar said,
July 29, 2010 at 10:33 am
Don, you’re right – I went too far in my late-night polemic. I shouldn’t have added that last bit, at least not in the form I did.
As for what I’d replace ASBOs with, I guess partly I’m inclined to deny the need for such a thing, and am parlty hostile to the New Lab name “ASBO” and mentality behind it. But tbh I’ve not got my thoughts entirely straight on this issue as is probably now becoming apparrent.
ASBOs, power and local Tories « Though Cowards Flinch said,
July 29, 2010 at 12:33 pm
[...] also good contributions from Paul Sagar and Salman at The Third Estate on this matter. Categories: General Politics, Terrible Tories [...]
Jamie said,
July 29, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Technically they’re not definitely going to be abolished – what May said was:
“That is why I have launched a review of the anti-social behaviour powers available to the police.”
She did later say that it was ‘time to move beyond the ASBO’, but whether that means they’ll be scrapped (most likely) or kept but other things will be introduced isn’t certain.
Leo said,
July 29, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Don,
what’s your opinion on Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) instead? I once read somewhere that they’re more successful than ASBOs at reducing instances of the behaviour they’re doled out for. That said, the idea of including the offender in the deciding of what their punishment should be, and of making the offender meet and apologise to their victims, seems premised on them being able to feel shame or remorse for what they’ve done, which probably wouldn’t happen in the worst cases, i.e. the ones that the Daily Mail uses to attack the policy as soft and wishy-washy. On the other hand, it suggests an optimism and a more rehabilitative approach that i find considerably more appealing than simply branding someone ‘anti-social’, which just seems like a counter-productive affirmation of social ‘otherness’.
Of course, ABCs still fall foul of the liberal objections Paul outlines, in so far as it’s still the community that decides what ‘acceptable behaviour’ is. But is it really so illiberal to think that in certain areas of (public) behaviour – those where we think it good that people behave decently (e.g. because their doing otherwise harms others in certain ways), but also that prosecuting them for not doing so would be counter-productive – we should allow this kind of thing? I mean, patently there are things i could do that would impinge on the private liberty of another person (allocated by the harm principle, rights, whatever) but which are not big or serious enough to warrant a court case. Don’t we then need some kind of measure to deal with those instances? I’m not saying ABCs are the best solution to that problem, only that they’re a better alternative than ASBOs, and that it seems to me that *something* is needed.
donpaskini said,
July 29, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Hi Leo – I’m not that clear about the difference between ABCs and ASBOs, is it that one is agreed by police/YOT/individual and the other is imposed by a magistrate?
Leo said,
July 29, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Found this, which suggests police/youth offending teams impose them, although they seem to often be referred to as voluntary.
http://www.lawandparents.co.uk/abcs-acceptable-behaviour-contract.html
Peter said,
July 30, 2010 at 12:08 am
Leo,
But the ASBO doesn’t just brand someone anti-social, does it? Rather, it identifies that the person in question has been engaging in anti-social behaviour, and then imposes conditions designed to make it more difficult for that person to continue to engage in anti-social behaviour. That doesn’t sound like an affirmation of otherness, anymore than the recognition that someone has committed a crime is an affirmation of social otherness.
Anthony Miller said,
August 19, 2010 at 8:34 am
The thing is there used to be safeguards – a catalog of bad behaviour had to be collated.
This was got rid of when local authorities got the power to appoint anyone to fine anyone £75-2500
Here are some fine examples of people getting ASBOs for silly reasons
http://www.pearshapedcomedy.com/ban_history.html
and here is a very revealing section of hansard
http://www.pearshapedcomedy.com/hansard.html
Dont fancy signing the petition,do you?
http://www.londonisfunny.com/petition
It’s a shame because when they came in they sorted out legislative cracks much behaviour had slipped through.
However, when Tony Blair said “Tough on Crime Tough on the Causes of Crime”
what he meant by causes of crime is social behaviour that isn’t actually criminal
but that may eventually lead to a crime being committed …or may not.
This slowled evolved into a series of bans on just about every social activity the government didn’t like.
After all you cant have anti-social behaviour if you dont have social behaviour.