Anti-Social Behaviour Order

Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO) were introduced during the Blair administration as part of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act. They are directed at people over the age of ten who have acted "in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as himself" (Crime and Disorder Act). It is also intended to deter the offender and protect other people from further anti-social acts (cf. Macdonald 184). This broad definition opens the ASBO up to be applied to various sorts of misconduct. It is also noteworthy that soemthing needs only to be "likely" to cause harrassment etc. in order to cause an ASBO.

While the first issue of an ASBO does not create a criminal record (Kirk 259), the breach of one is a criminal offence and can be punished with a prison sentence of up to five years (cf. Macdonald 184).

The need for the establishment of the ASBO rose from the impression that "criminal trial is not the answer to a large number of society’s concerns about unlawful and quasi-unlawful behaviour" (Kirk 261). It was meant as a more direct means against perpetrators who often caused problems in a certain neighbourhood (cf. Macdonald 185), with a punishment that was to prevent them from keeping up their disruptive behaviour.

The ASBO has become so widely implemented, and for such rather petty offenses such as spitting or hanging around in public, that is has become "more of a ‘badge of honour’ than a punishment" (Kirk 259) for some adolescents.

Sources

1998 Crime and Disorder Act (accessed 18 May 2011)

Kirk, David. "Order, Order!" The Journal of Criminal Law (2008) 72: 259–261.

Macdonald, Stuart. "A Suicidal Woman, Roaming Pigs and a Noisy Trampolinist: Refining the ASBO’s Definition of Anti-Social Behaviour." The Modern Law Review 69 (2), 2006: 183-213.