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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 80-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Inquiry into Anti-Social Behaviour
Tuesday 18 January 2005 MR ROGER HOWARD, MR CHRIS DYER, MR RICHARD GARSIDE, MR WILL MCMAHON, MR ROGER SMITH and MR JIM SKELSEY Evidence heard in Public Questions 282 - 415
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 18 January 2005 Members present Mrs Claire Curtis-Thomas Mrs Janet Dean Mr Gwyn Prosser Bob Russell Mr Marsha Singh David Winnick
In the absence of the Chairman, David Winnick was called to the Chair. ________________ Memoranda submitted by Crime Concern, Crime and Society Foundation, and JUSTICE
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Roger Howard, Chief Executive, Mr Chris Dyer, Senior Consultant, Crime Concern, Mr Richard Garside, Director, Mr Will McMahon, Senior Associate, Crime and Society Foundation, Mr Roger Smith, Director, and Mr Jim Skelsey, solicitor and member, JUSTICE, examined. Q282 David Winnick: Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming along today to give evidence to us in our inquiry into anti-social behaviour. I am not very keen to have long statements, but perhaps there are some brief remarks that you would like to make. Obviously your views will very much come from answering questions. May I apologise, as temporary Chairman, on behalf of a number of my parliamentary colleagues who are absent. You can rest assured that it is because of parliamentary duties, including the Chairman. This does happen from time to time, I am afraid, and you will forgive us. Perhaps you would all like to make a brief statement. If you do not wish to do so, there is no need. Perhaps I could start with you, Mr Howard. Is there any statement that you would like to make at the beginning? Mr Howard: A very short one. Crime Concern works across England and Wales in a huge number of crime and disorder partnerships. We have a lot of practical experience on the ground, and so what we will be saying to you today in our evidence is born out of a huge amount of practical experience, working with local public services and, importantly, with local communities and local residents. Q283 David Winnick: Mr Dyer, is there anything you wish to say? Mr Dyer: Not much beyond what Mr Howard has said. I work for the same organisation. Q284 David Winnick: Mr Garside? Mr Garside: I am happy to wait until the main session. Mr McMahon: Me too. Mr Smith: Could I make three points, which will put our remarks in context? One, we have no doubt that behaviour exists which is anti-social and which it is correct for the State to address. Two, there seems to be a wide measure of agreement, and we share it, that the way to address it is a wide variety of non-coercive measures in the shadow of a measure of coercion which is very sparingly used. Our third point is that we fear that too much weight is being put on an anti-social behaviour order in its current form; that it needs reform; and that, without such reform, it will lose much of its impact within a two or three-year period. David Winnick: Your views have of course been well put and argued in the papers that you have sent us. As always in these matters, we have a number of questions to put to you. May I say that there is no need necessarily - you are all busy, as we are - for every organisation represented here to answer, but just as you consider appropriate. I will ask my colleague Claire Curtis-Thomas to ask some questions. Q285 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I will start with a general question, which I would like to go to a representative of each of the organisations with us today, and it is specifically this. How useful is the concept of anti-social behaviour? Mr Howard, would you like to kick this off? Mr Howard: There is a huge range of descriptions of behaviours, from fly-tipping right through to crack house closure. It is a bit like an elephant, is it not? You know what it is when you see it. I know that this has taxed a lot of people. I do not think that we should worry too much about definitions, but perhaps we could help with a bit of clarity. The London Anti-Social Behaviour Strategy has helped clarify. Under the Crime and Disorder Act, the definition is somewhat restrictive. Perhaps I may read to you the London definition. We can always let you have this in detail. As they define it, and I suppose it is a qualification, the individual components of the behaviour which "are not prohibited by the criminal law, or in isolation constitute relatively minor offences". It is that difference between something that can be dealt with under the criminal law and other actions and behaviours. I think that it is helpful if we can keep that as a broad definition. Q286 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So the definition as it stands now is adequate? Mr Howard: If it could be fine-tuned, and I would say along the lines of the London Anti‑Social Behaviour Strategy. We can let you have that, without going into the full detail. Q287 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So some emphasis on civil measures as opposed to criminal measures? Mr Howard: Yes. Q288 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Richard Garside? Mr Garside: Our view is that, while it is clearly the case that people might do all sorts of things which may at times be considered anti-social by one or more people, it does not make much sense to lump so many diverse and different groups of behaviours under one heading of anti-social behaviour and think that you can develop a grand strategy for dealing with it. A couple of years ago, the Home Office made one of their first attempts to quantify anti‑social behaviour. They came out with a list which was broken down into four categories, 16 sub-categories and more than 60 individual types of behaviour. It was ranging from everything from running crack houses, to kids letting down care tyres, people driving cars too fast, and children cycling on the pavements. So, for a range of reasons - and particularly for those reasons - we do not find that trying to lump so many things together is particularly helpful. We therefore suggest that, broadly speaking, we need to distinguish three different types of broad strands of behaviours. There are the kinds of behaviours that are plainly criminal. For example, if you are running a crack house, if you are fighting, that is a criminal act. We can debate the degree to which the criminal justice system plays an effective role in dealing with those things but they are, broadly speaking, criminal. At the other end of the scale you have whole areas of contested behaviours, which some people would consider to be anti-social and some people would not. In many cases, they are arguably a case for tolerance and people learning to be tolerant about particular kinds of behaviours. Classically, for example, young people just hanging round. If they are just hanging round, it is difficult to see how that can be deemed to be anti-social. There is lots of stuff in the middle, where again it is a contested matter. They may be genuine problems. Someone playing their stereo late at night can be a real nuisance for many, many people. There is not an obvious criminal justice solution to that, but there are things that could be done - likewise, fly-tipping, graffiti, whatever. So we would argue that we need to clarify what we mean by anti-social behaviour and start to disaggregate all these different things that we have jumbled together under one category. Q289 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: But is that not what the anti-social behaviour strategy is? It is bringing together that disparate group of activities which constitute anti-social behaviour, whether it is criminal or civil. Is not what you are arguing for what we had before? Was not the problem then that there was not an effective, strategic solution to that? It was different people in different groups doing different things, but not focused on this problem in its entirety. Mr Garside: We agree that it is important for government, both locally and nationally, to play a role in ensuring that individuals feel safe and secure in their neighbourhoods and their communities, and that they feel free from harassment, distress, alarm, and all those things. We therefore do not have any disagreement with the general principle that there is a role for government in this. The question is whether the strategy that the Government has chosen to adopt has been a particularly appropriate or right one. In many cases, at one end what you have is criminal behaviour, where effectively the anti-social behaviour strategies are arguably being used as an additional entry point into the criminal justice system. You have "criminal justice lite" through the civil burden of proof, and these kinds of questions. You are bringing people into the criminal justice system - if you like, through the back door - in order better to control them. That is a question about the way the criminal justice system operates. At the other end of the scale, you have people who are being criminalised, or quasi‑criminalised, just for doing things that are very contested in terms of whether they are disruptive at all. And, as I have said, you have this stuff in the middle. We are not disputing that government has a role to play in this but, in the way that these strategies are currently determined, they often have quite punitive impacts on people - which are not very helpful. Q290 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: What do you mean by "not very helpful"? To whom? Society affected by the nuisance, or the individuals who are causing the nuisance? Mr Garside: Arguably both. We came across a case recently of a ten-year-old autistic boy who was jumping up and down on a trampoline in his back garden and making gurgling noises - because he is autistic and he makes the kinds of noises that mentally able people do not. He ended up getting an ASBO, because the neighbours found it distressing. There are many other cases and we can draw in all sorts of cases. There are cases where people have had mental health problems, and who are causing a nuisance to their neighbours because they are mentally ill. What is happening is that they are being ASBO'd or being subjected to other forms of often very heavy-handed interventions, rather than having their mental health needs addressed. There are many cases of this, and we have some case studies which we are looking at and which we are happy to detail. We do not have time to go into them in lots of detail, but we are happy to make you a note after the meeting, if that would be appropriate. The challenge for any strategy is that it deals with the problems which are clearly identified - and it is not clear to us that those problems are being clearly identified - but that it does not, in the process, draw in others who are being labelled as anti-social or disruptive, when arguably their problems can often come from a different direction and a different place, or where there can be contestation about the degree to which they are being disruptive at all. Q291 David Winnick: May I intervene here? You say there are many examples and you quoted one of an autistic lad, but do you have any documentation, Mr Garside, to show that people are being labelled anti-social and dealt with under the anti-social behaviour orders who are in the sort of category that you have just mentioned? Mr Garside: Yes, we do have documented evidence. I would be happy to do a supplementary on that. Q292 David Winnick: What numbers are we talking about? Mr Garside: The problem, of course, is that a degree of this is anecdotal and a degree of these are individual case studies. One of the problems with the role of the anti-social behaviour strategy, in particular the ASBOs, is that there is simply not enough information available. It may be collated but, for example, we are not aware of any nationally collated information that looks at the mental health needs of individuals who have been subjected to ASBOs. There is anecdotal evidence and there are localised studies. We came across a study in Leeds, where it was suggested that maybe 30% of people who had been subjected to ASBOs had mental health needs. We are not aware of any nationally collated information about this. It may be there but, if it is there, we have not come across it. It certainly is the kind of information that ought to be collated, because the reality is that there are people who are being subjected to inappropriate criminal justice-style responses who are certainly not criminal, but also their presenting behaviour does not come from a criminal intent. We came across a case of a woman who was dialling 999 continuously. She was eventually subjected to an ASBO, but she was clearly someone who had profound mental disturbance. She was very disturbed by the activities of her neighbours upstairs. Her neighbours were arguably not doing anything which could be considered anti-social, but who is anti-social in this? Is it the neighbours who are causing her distress? Is it she who is causing problems for the police because she keeps dialling them and clogging up their switchboard? Arguably everybody and no one is anti‑social under the current definition. Q293 David Winnick: Against which, of course, there is the number of people who have been subject to anti-social behaviour orders, who have made a sheer misery in their neighbourhoods. You will know about the gang connected with Neasden, or whatever they called themselves, which went to the High Court. You would not dispute, would you, Mr Garside, that the large majority of those who have been subject to these orders have been creating very great trouble for law-abiding citizens, which neither you nor I would like to face? Mr Garside: I would not necessarily endorse the view that most of the people subjected to these orders are creating major havoc. It is clearly the case that what is happening is that there are people who are involved in criminal activity, who are causing real problems in neighbourhoods, who are being dealt with through the anti-social behaviour legislation and the anti-social behaviour powers. It is worth bearing in mind that that was not the original intention of these powers when they were first brought in. We have seen significant mission creep in that sense, in terms of how the anti-social behaviour powers are being implemented. I do not dispute that there are individuals who are causing real problems, who are being dealt with through anti-social behaviour legislation. Q294 David Winnick: You accept that? Mr Garside: Of course I do. It would be ludicrous to suggest that anti-social behaviour does not exist and there are not real problems that people are encountering on a daily basis which need to be dealt with. The question is whether the anti-social behaviour strategies, as they are currently constructed, are a way of doing it. Q295 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I found that contribution very interesting and thought‑provoking, Mr Garside. However, in the interests of expediency, I would now like to turn to Mr Smith. Mr Smith, my original question was whether you are comfortable with the concept of anti-social behaviour, or do you have sympathies with the views that have been expressed by your colleagues on the panel today? Mr Smith: I certainly have sympathies with it. I think that there is a paradox about the notion of anti-social behaviour: that its flexibility is incredibly useful. It is the core of it. It does allow you to address problems that otherwise you would find it difficult to address. However, the problem is that the breadth that it can accommodate raises issues. Oddly enough, the whole concept, and particularly orders at the end of it, is only useful if it is used with restraint. There are a number of issues about that in particular. First, there is the issue that Mr Garside raised: where ASBOs or anti-social behaviour is being used as a mechanism to deal with activity which is already criminalised and where Parliament has already decided on both a criminal procedure and a criminal sentence. There are a number of areas in relation to that where it is a problem, but one is prostitution. Parliament has decided about the circumstances in which you can charge someone with the offence of soliciting and they can be found guilty, and the consequences of that. Anti-social behaviour orders and the anti‑social behaviour programme are being used to address prostitution and to bypass Parliament's restrictions that would otherwise apply on the prosecution of that kind of behaviour. There are two ways forward. If Parliament wishes to change how prostitution is dealt with, it is perfectly within Parliament's right and, as parliamentarians, you should change the law. The danger is that ASBOs and the anti-social behaviour notion are being used as a shortcut to do that. I think that is problematic. I would love to go as far as Mr Garside and say that ASBOs should only be used where the criminal law is not applicable. I think that there are problems about that. In particular, there are some types of threatening behaviour where you get into a frontier problem of behaviour which is both anti-social and which might otherwise be criminalised. I think that there are therefore some difficulties about going as firmly to the position which he identified. I like it in theory, but in practice I think that there are some problems with it. There is a problem in terms of too imaginative a use of anti-social behaviour. Q296 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Perhaps I could interrupt you for a moment. Are you saying that ASBOs should only be applicable to criminal behaviour? Mr Smith: No, I am saying that, reluctantly, I go along with the definition of anti-social behaviour that we have; but, in practice, I think that there have to be some constraints about how it is operating. Q297 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: For instance, Mr Smith, if an individual is prosecuted for prostitution, do you have a problem with an ASBO also being attached to that criminal conviction which precludes an individual from going back to a particular position to peddle their wares? Mr Smith: No. If the order is effectively part of the sentence and it is a proportionate response to the crime, I do not have the same problem as I have with freestanding anti-social behaviour orders, which I think are being used as a shortcut. Q298 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: In your submission you mentioned the word "objective". You said that the anti-social behaviour definition should have an objective measure. What do you mean by that objectivity, and could you compare it with what you consider to be subjective measures? Mr Smith: I can answer that now, but may I just finish my earlier answer? First, I have problems where there is an overlap in the criminal law in relation to a substantive offence which should be prosecuted under that criminal law. Second, I think that there is a problem of spreading the definition too wide. So I think that there is a problem as the number of Norfolk farmers caring for errant pigs is brought within the system. I think that brings it into disrepute, and there has to be constraint about how this is used. Third, there is also sometimes a practical problem: that there is a tendency for the authorities concerned too easily to move to orders, rather than to non-coercive measures. That would be my answer to your first question. Your second question was based on what we said about an objective test. Mr Skelsey is a practitioner in Camden, a solicitor who has done a number of these, and we have discussed this at length, trying to identify what is the test that we think would work. The difficulty comes with the definition at the moment of it being behaviour that has caused or is likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress. I think that the test has to be an objective one of "has caused", which probably has implied with it, "has reasonably caused", and in a reasonably foreseeable way. There has to be an objective measure of behaviour. We are dealing with something which ultimately may be an offence. It is a prime principle that we, as citizens, know in advance what an offence may be. The easy answer is to say, "If you break an ASBO, that is an offence. You know that"; but it seems to me that you have also to apply those criteria to the behaviour antecedent to that. Q299 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Finally, I have this brief question. You have all referred, either directly or obliquely, to the variation throughout the country in terms of pursuing anti-social behaviour orders. Do you think that this huge discrepancy in pursuit of ASBOs across the region is either a strength or a weakness? A strength in that it provides flexibility for authorities and it is responsive to local conditions, or maybe a weakness because it is perpetuating an unfairness - a different sort of response to similar conditions. Mr Howard, I would be grateful for your view on that. Mr Howard: Could I first make the point that we are drifting from talking about anti-social behaviour to anti-social behaviour orders? We need to be very careful, in that there is a mass of legislation which can contain and cope with a vast range of behaviours - whether it is noisy parties, dog pollution, or whatever. We need to be clear that tackling anti-social behaviour has that vast range, and we have always responded to it, whether adequately or not, in many localities and in different ways. At one level, it is not surprising that there are variations across the country. Problems are different in different localities. The existing infrastructure of support facilities that Richard Garside and others have commented on - whether there is adequate drug treatment and counselling, whether there are other services there to cope with problems - all those factors will influence whether anti-social behaviour orders are used in abundance or not. I guess the size of the local authority and the resources that it has at its disposal will influence that. It is not surprising, therefore, that if we believe in local solutions to local problems, we need to recognise that we have to have something that fits what is appropriate for that particular locality. It may very well be that there are local citizens who are causing mayhem, and the use of an ASBO is absolutely appropriate as an amelioration measure. In other areas, it may be appropriate to use ABCs and other measures. I think that there is no blueprint to say what is appropriate for one particular area. That is why I make the caveat that the ASBO is not the only solution to anti‑social behaviour: there is a huge range of other measures. Mr Dyer: Perhaps I could pick up on some of the points which have not been made today regarding the application of the definition in real terms, on the ground - if you want to put it that way. There is the issue round victims. Certainly, in relation to my own work over the past several years of managing programmes to deal with these very issues in the most deprived areas of the country, what I hear and have witnessed repeatedly is the fact that anti‑social behaviour legislation - with all the flaws that my colleagues have identified, and this is not a vote for some sort of clear-cut legislation - my own experience is that in the vast majority of cases it has been used effectively and also appropriately. I am not aware of a vast number of the appalling cases mentioned earlier by Mr Garside. The quick response would be that something like that should never go near a court. There is also the fact that the immediate response is a civil and not a criminal one. This is a civil order in the first instance. It is one which, if breached, has to be proved. To date, the figures swing slightly more in favour of non-breach than breach. Q300 David Winnick: That is very interesting. I was interested in your comments, Mr Dyer, when you disagreed with Mr Garside's view about those affected by anti-social behaviour orders, but Mr Garside will give us some documentation. Mr Garside: We would be happy to provide the Committee with those. Q301 David Winnick: It is a very serious point, which I am not aware has been raised with this Committee before. I could be wrong, but I do not believe that it has been raised. Mr Garside: We would be very happy to do that. Q302 David Winnick: If you feel that there has been such a blatant abuse - because there would be no other way to describe it - I think that it would be useful if you gave us any chapter and verse that you have. Mr Garside: Would you also be interested in a quick comment about the disparities? If you want to move this session on, I quite understand. David Winnick: Yes. Mrs Dean: Could I ask you first, Mr Smith, in your view what are the main causes of anti‑social behaviour? Q303 David Winnick: That is a leading question! Mr Smith: You have picked the lawyer to answer it! The problem is that I think it is an unanswerable question, because it ranges from householders who will not keep their Leylandii hedges properly trimmed - so that is inconsiderate householders wanting too much privacy at the expense of their neighbours - to prostitutes, to young people drinking, to errant pig farmers. My only answer to your question illustrates the problem I have with the concept. If one talks about anti-social behaviour, the political construct, we are talking about young people hanging round on estates and in town centres; but I think that is not the experience of how anti-social behaviour is being defined. It is being defined very widely; very differently in different localities. I therefore think that there is a real problem. If you want me to say what I think the problem is for young people, I can answer that - or hedge-growers. Q304 Mrs Dean: That would be helpful. Mr Smith: If we concentrate on the problem of young people - and Mr Skelsey acts for them, so he can chip in if he thinks that I am getting it wrong - you have some loutish behaviour, some straight-out unlawful behaviour, drug dealing, intimidation, people on the edge of robbery, people looking out, and you have a lot of bored behaviour, and you have behaviour which is none of the above but which middle-aged and older members of the community find threatening when young people are standing round at bus stops. In terms of response to it, it does shock me how much youth services - even in inner London areas, which I am most familiar with - have been wound down since I was much nearer the field than I am now. So I am not surprised to hear reports, if you go and talk to young people and listen to what they say, that they are bored. I therefore think that there is a whole range of things, ranging from deliberate delinquency to boredom. Mr Skelsey: Speaking as a criminal practitioner working with people who are before the courts, there are definitely themes of poverty; there is also lack of opportunities, lack of engagement and, as Mr Smith mentions, lack of youth centres and funding in that area. Often there is also not a lot of parental guidance. Certainly a major factor at that age is boredom. There is not a lot of gain to be established from their criminal activity; they are just not usefully and constructively engaged, and that is predominant. If I were to mention one thing which contributes towards anti-social behaviour amongst youngsters, it would definitely be boredom. Mrs Dean: Mr Garside, do you have anything to add to what has been said? Q305 David Winnick: Perhaps you could be relatively brief, because we have another set of witnesses and there are a number of important questions left which we want to ask you. Mr Garside: I will be brief. The problem is that we get into tangles when we ask what are the causes of anti-social behaviour, because it covers so much. Kids hanging round may be bored, and boredom might be behind some teenage-related anti-social behaviour - though, in some ways, what is wrong with kids just hanging round? Speeding drivers in neighbourhoods? That is nothing to do with boredom. It could be to do with a whole range of issues. Kids cycling on pavements? Maybe they are cycling on the pavements because they are frightened of cycling on the roads, because of the speeding drivers. This comes back to my earlier point: that if we want to understand what is going on here, we need to start talking about bored teenagers, or about speeding drivers, or about crack houses, or about graffiti, or fly-tipping - rather than anti-social behaviour. Anti-social behaviour as a construct gets in the way of any clear thinking about the causes. Q306 Mrs Dean: Mr Howard? Mr Howard: Could I ask my colleague Chris Dyer to give you an example of how Birmingham have approached this? Mr Dyer: For the past several years I have been involved in overseeing a programme called the Safer Neighbourhood Project across the whole of the City of Birmingham - which has just won the European Crime Prevention Award. As one of the results of lots of work by lots of people, particularly the community which has been the main driving force within that, there has been a reduction in youth crime of 29%. A big chunk of that is ASB, basically, and we also have separate statistics which would suggest - because it is one of those things which are very hard to measure, accepting the points that have been made - that it would be about the 25% mark on average across all areas. The reason why I would suggest to the panel that that is the case is because we have used a variety of measures. A partnership approach has been taken. We have responded to the community's identified needs and their priorities. Rather than our saying, "We know what the issues are and we will tell them how to resolve them", it is working in partnership. Another example is that, as an organisation, we are working with the Home Office at the present time in the Taking a Stand Awards, and we have been doing so for several years. A large piece of research has been done with all the entrants to that award this year, and the response has resoundingly been that young people need something to do, in simple form, but also that communities need to be engaged in the process too. These are therefore some very strong messages which we feel should be added. Q307 Mrs Dean: Could I ask you, Mr Dyer, how far would sub-criminal anti-social behaviour - especially that perpetrated by young people - lead to crime if left unchecked? Mr Dyer: Not surprisingly, there are several answers. First, research would suggest that most young people grow out of criminality, albeit findings on the back of the recent British Crime Survey would suggest that the age is getting higher - slightly, but higher all the same. My own experience as a practitioner in the field would suggest that early intervention, prevention, is by far a better way of tackling such matters. We have already heard about issues such as, for example, ABCs, Youth Service, and there is a myriad of other things that you can put on the table. I go back to the point of working at a local level; working in partnership effectively to apply legislation where appropriate, and also, where appropriate, not to apply it. Mr Howard: At the root of your question is that if we can understand the causes we can prevent. We would wholly endorse that. If one is looking at youth in particular - and this is only one aspect of anti-social behaviour - if you look at the evidence of the work of the Youth Justice Board and at their youth inclusion programmes, and we run one in Margaret Hodges's constituency - recently the YJB have found an 81% reduction in arrests of young people. In other areas, it is quite common that there is a 40 to 60% reduction in arrests. There are also the Youth Inclusion Support Panels. These are incredibly effective early intervention measures. The problem is that, in the last spending review, I do not think that it is a State secret that the Youth Justice Board argued for at least 200 of these programmes to be in place around the country. There are currently around 70. To a great fanfare, an announcement was made that there was a 50% increase; but a 50% increase of 70 is 30 - and there are 100. So there is a huge need out there, and you can do more - without necessarily the need for more legislation or enforcement. Early intervention, prevention, can mean great savings in police time, court time, and the community's well‑being. Q308 Mrs Dean: Could I ask Mr Garside this? If anti-social behaviour is tolerated, what implications do you think that has for youth offending? Mr Garside: You mean is there a link? Q309 Mrs Dean: Yes. Mr Garside: If you look at the British Crime Survey, the researchers there look at this point and they say that there is no evidence of a link. One of the problems here is that we look backwards from the present and try to make the links. So it may well be that a 17 year-old who is caught joyriding round his neighbourhood was, at the age of 15, playing football in the local square and causing a bit of a nuisance and, at the age of 13, may be jumping up and down on garages and irritating householders. That does not mean that, because he was jumping up and down on garages at the age of 13, he was on some kind of linear path to being a joy rider by the age of 17 and a burglar by the age of 20. To say that some people who are doing things which are deemed anti-social may also commit crime is not to say that there is a transmission belt from anti-social behaviour to crime. Q310 Mrs Dean: Do you have any comments to add to that, Mr Smith? Mr Smith: I would agree. I think that the question, "What do we do about disaffected youth?" is a better one to ask than to ask, "What do we do about anti-social behaviour?". One of the problems about using anti-social behaviour as a category is that it all gets very imprecise. I have been struck, talking to Mr Skelsey about his cases, by how many of the cases are about behaviour which is criminal under other provisions. This is something that has been said earlier. There are other ways of getting at much of this behaviour. Q311 Bob Russell: Mr Smith, continuing with disaffected youth, we have been told about the lack of youth facilities, the closure of centres and so on, from the time when you and I were lads. If we are to tackle the causes of crime, would you like to see that sort of establishment reinstated? Mr Smith: Yes. Q312 Bob Russell: Alongside that, do you feel that inadequate housing is playing a part in the rise of what has been termed anti-social behaviour? The disaffected, the people who are perhaps not academically gifted, who may well feel that society does not want them? Mr Smith: There is a range of problems. Assuming that we are roughly of the same age, the nature of local authority social housing has changed dramatically in my lifetime as a lawyer. Q313 Bob Russell: For better or worse? Mr Smith: The crude answer is for worse, but I will probably resist the question. A different type of person is now being housed. Public housing, social housing, is picking up tenants who are much less likely to work now; much more likely to have a range of other problems; they are not in trade unions; they do not have experience of organisation; they do not have the strong tenants' unions of the past. So they are much more ghettoes of people who are, or feel they are, at the bottom. Q314 Bob Russell: Is that a way of partially identifying the perpetrators of anti-social behaviour - that society has ghettoised them? That if they were not in ghettoes, perhaps that would be one way of identifying the perpetrators - if we take them out of that ghetto and disperse them in the community at large, which used to be the case, so that they will not fester in the same barrel? Mr Smith: As a lawyer, I am the wrong person to ask this. It is a social policy question. I think that you will find there are certain characteristics to those who come before the courts. Often, they will tend to come, and Mr Skelsey said it, from households with bad parenting; I am sure that they will disproportionately come from the estates that you would predict - you will know this from your own constituency; and they will have other criteria, all bundled up into social exclusion. The current overall policy of driving against social exclusion is right. Anti-social behaviour is interesting because it is a sort of backwash against the drive for social inclusion, because it is promoting the notion that some people have excluded themselves and we should exclude them further. Q315 Bob Russell: Do we yet know what is the most effective response to the situation where I have put the question and the answer? How shall we strike the balance between diversion, the non-formal, formal, or indeed family interventions, where you have this festering sore in a community? What is the best way of tackling it? Mr Howard: I think there is quite significant evidence now that early intervention and prevention is cost-effective. We are finding that across a whole range of domains. It is not exactly the same about ASB. I do not think that we yet have enough evidence round ASB interventions and their cost-effectiveness; but if one looks at crime reduction, crime interventions, the usual paradigm is that £1 spent will save £3, £4 or £5 for the taxpayer. If I may say so, it is about political will in relation to redirecting resources into those areas of early intervention and prevention, as opposed to the traditional "Let's go for enforcement". We have a lot of evidence. The Youth Justice Board has this evidence, and I am sure that there is a lot of evidence in their submissions on the arrest rates on youth inclusion programmes. If you are looking at the support programmes and mental health, as Richard Garside has mentioned, again, there is a great deal of evidence now about early intervention in many of those domains bringing rich rewards for the taxpayer. It is partly about political will and the difficulty that you as policymakers face in shifting that. I will let my colleague answer regarding housing management and housing allocations. Q316 Bob Russell: Can I stick on this one though? Following on what Mr Smith said about disaffected youth and the lack of youth centres, and bearing in mind that your organisation, Crime Concern, is to create safe and prosperous communities, is there a role not only for the youth centres but also for the recognised youth organisations - who, in my experience, do not tend to go into difficult areas? Mr Howard: I think that is absolutely right. There is an impending Green Paper on youth, is there not? I think that it will be for you as parliamentarians. A lot of people have ducked the issue about whether the youth service and youth provision should be put on a statutory footing. Many people in local authorities will argue that that has been one of the great tragedies for youth: that it has not been a statutory requirement on local authorities to do that. Many people would argue that that is the mechanism and device with which to deliver that enhanced provision. All I would say is that the Youth Justice Board has some excellent examples of early interventions and preventive work, and indeed its work with offenders. There are a lot of lessons there. I think that the whole area has been significantly under‑resourced. Q317 Bob Russell: Manchester City Council have argued that ASBOs and housing injunctions should be seen not as enforcement tools but as preventive tools, and that they should be used extensively so as to provide a remedy for victims. I do not know if that is where you come in, Mr Dyer. Mr Dyer: I am familiar with Manchester's stance on the matter. Where do we start on that one? Therein lies the debate about how do you use an ASBO. Is it a preventive tool? In certain cases it probably is. That is the best answer I could give to that. Going back to the point you raised before about the concept of housing management and "ghettoisation", which was referred to earlier by Mr Smith, and the idea is that these are potentially full of less‑educated, downtrodden individuals, I must say that I have some difficulty with the idea that it is a separate part. It makes it seem as if different aspects of society are at work, which I do not believe is so. My own experience would be that it is a minority in such communities that cause the majority of problems. When we talk about engaging people - and I am probably beginning to sound a little repetitive - it is about working at a level which is appropriate to that local neighbourhood and using the tools that one has. I therefore have some difficulty with the perception that has been put across. Q318 Bob Russell: Turning to Mr Garside, we are told that in the last year there were 2,633 ASBOs, just over 5,000 acceptable behaviour contracts, ABCs, yet the Government's estimate is that there are 131/2 million reports every year of anti-social behaviour. In your written evidence you have concentrated on ASBOs. In that context, would you accept that in practice the vast majority of instances of anti-social behaviour are not dealt with through ASBOs? Mr Garside: That is clearly the case, bearing in mind the points about the difficulties with defining what anti-social behaviour actually is. It clearly must be the case. We have some questions about the way the Government currently counts anti-social behaviour. However, I think that it illustrates a slight tension and a problem in the current policy. Last November, Louise Casey told the Welsh Affairs Committee, "I think the growth in the number of ASBOs is incredibly heartening". You will remember from some earlier sessions in this inquiry, however, that you had some people working with and in the practice field who said that they considered the implementation of ASBOs to be a failure, not a success. I therefore think that there is a confusion at various levels about the role of ASBOs, which is partly a function of the fact that we have seen significant mission creep with their implementation. It clearly is the case that at one level they are a relatively small picture; but at another level they play very important rhetorical role. There are a lot of the messages from the Home Office. A couple of Octobers ago, in a speech to police, housing officers and local authorities, the Prime Minister said, "We have listened. We have given you the powers. It's time to use them". The Anti‑Social Behaviour Unit often talks about a "campaign" and how they are campaigning for people, amongst other things, to implement ASBOs. So there is a bit of a tension there. ASBOs are, if you like, at the hard end of quite a wide wedge. At the other end you have some quite tough-talking rhetoric from politicians, which is not necessarily replicated on the ground. Q319 Bob Russell: Is that rhetoric which is helping communities to feel safer and to feel that there is action, or is it purely rhetoric? Mr Garside: That is a very good question. I do not think that there is an easy answer, and I am not trying to fluff it. If politicians and other opinion-formers talk up the nature of the problem, it is a difficult question to know the degree to which people on the ground think, "That's really good. They're dealing with it", and the degree to which people think, "Oh, my goodness! I never realised that this was such a problem". The anti-social behaviour rhetoric has given almost everybody an easily usable term to describe behaviours which they may not in the past have thought of in those terms - and that is not always helpful. Q320 Bob Russell: Are you not also guilty of exaggeration? Out of 131/2 million reports, there have been fewer than 8,000 ASBOs and ABCs combined being issued. Are you not exaggerating the other side of it, and exaggerating what is really happening on the ground? Mr Garside: I do not think that we are saying that ASBOs are being used too much in a numerical sense, if what we mean by that is, compared with all the anti-social behaviour the Government claims is there, how many are used. What we are saying is that they are being used disproportionately and, very often, targeting very vulnerable people. Q321 David Winnick: The country is not being flooded with ASBOs, is it? Mr Smith: Not yet, but they are on an upward growth. One has to remember this. The paradox is that they will get to a number where their effect will diminish, because part of their value is shock and the shortcut that they provide. That gives them a built-in half-life, which is why we would argue that now is the time to start looking beyond ASBOs, to fix ASBOs, and to deal with the problems which will lead to their demise. In two or three years' time, I think that there will be a major reversion against them. Q322 David Winnick: I wonder if you would accept that politicians - and not necessarily confined to any one particular political party - have been subject to constant complaints by constituents over the last ten to 15 years about anti-social behaviour. At one time our surgeries would be dealing, first and foremost, with housing and with various other matters coming well behind. Increasingly - and I am sure that my own experience is not somehow unique, either to my colleagues round the table or to the House as a whole - constituents come to us, not because they are suffering from some sort of paranoia, persecution mania, or what‑have‑you, but because they are finding life unbearable. That is because, sometimes amounting to the involvement of only four or five youths, they are causing a constant nuisance, particularly late at night. They do not see any particular reason that if politicians, as they see it - and they may be wrong - live a life free from such harassment they, the constituents, should not also be able to do so. Would you accept, Mr Garside, that people who have come to see us in the circumstances I have described usually have good reasons for complaining? Mr Garside: It would be churlish for me to deny that. Given that I am obviously not familiar with the constituents, I would not want to countermand them. Perhaps I may ask my colleague Will McMahon to give you a slightly more detailed answer. Mr McMahon: It depends, as with the term "anti-social behaviour", on what you are talking about. As we have suggested, there is crime and then there are issues of tolerance and behaviours in between. This is an important distinction, for the following reason. If you are looking at nuisance behaviours, where people feel that people are being a nuisance in their area, and these complaints have been going on for some time, it may not necessarily be the case that a response that leads to the criminal justice system is the right kind of response. It may be the case that government could have looked at mediation and a campaign around active citizenship and mediation - which would very much fit in with what it is doing - to respond to these issues. If you look at the key issue of young people hanging round on the streets, I think that there is a question of prejudice here, which is that, as a society, we have a particularly dim view of what young people are doing when they hang round on the streets. We think that young people are more involved in crime than we are. It is not a particularly good area to say, "Actually, these are real problems with young people". For example, about 10% of cautioned or convicted offenders are under 18, but in recent research 60% of the public think that young people are responsible for 40% of crime; 25% of the public think that young people are responsible for 60% of crime. Q323 David Winnick: I think that we could all agree that the vast majority of young people are no more involved in unlawful actions than we are; but it is the minority. I did stress that sometimes the complaints are about no more than four or five, usually youths. That is, after all, only four or five out of the large numbers of young people who live in a particular area. I was just going to turn to Mr Smith, and then I have another set of questions before we end this session. Mr Smith: Is it a political problem? Yes. Is it a real problem - which is not quite the same thing? Yes. I think that all three of the organisations here agree with that. I think that all of us are a little unhappy about anti-social behaviour orders as a way of addressing them. It has to be clear. We are concerned with the method of response. If you said to your constituents who complain, "Would you like me to send the police round to lock them up and throw away the key?", on a 60:40 basis your constituents would probably say yes. That would not be right either; that would be absurd. So there are some constraints about how we deal with people. Q324 David Winnick: Briefly, Mr Howard? Mr Howard: What you get through your constituents is quite apparent, and it is a very real experience. However, I think that you have to start the problem-solving approach, which is to ask the question why. For economic reasons, over many years we have stripped away some of the informal guardians, have we not? The bus conductors, the park-keepers, the caretakers, and people like that - we have stripped those out and, for whatever reason, right or wrong, they have gone. Those informal mechanisms that we used for social control in one way or another have changed. Q325 David Winnick: Including PC Dixon. Mr Howard: It is not just PC Dixon, is it? I got a clip round the ear from a copper years ago, and they would not dare do that now! The point I am making, as Mr Russell said, is that there is a huge swathe of behaviour that is not subject to ASBOs. Do not let this dominate. How we respond to anti-social behaviour is not just through ASBOs; it is the tip of an iceberg. However, I think that there is a critical point in terms of how we respond in the support mechanisms. There are clearly a lot of people with some very difficult problems - whether it is parenting, child behaviour, mental health problems, addiction, whatever it is - and our experience round the country is that our responses as public services have been woefully inadequate in terms of genuine problem-solving. We have not addressed those problems, and we keep getting this recurring behaviour. It is no wonder that a third of ASBOs are breached: we are not tackling the root problems and the root causes. Some political parties have argued for an ASBO-plus. There is a great deal of provision that can be engineered and brought to bear on tackling that behaviour. Whether it is done in genuine partnership at the local level is questionable. Unless we can focus and move this anti-social behaviour campaign into the next phase, which is a sustainable community involvement, and good problem-solving with support mechanisms for some of the perpetrators, then we will just be recycling some of these problems. David Winnick: As usual, of course, we will take very much into account when we are preparing our report the views of many, not least yourselves. You can rest assured of that. My colleague Mr Singh has been waiting with great patience. Q326 Mr Singh: Mr Smith, JUSTICE is sharply critical of the dispersal powers. Why is that? Mr Smith: We are concerned about the breadth with which they might be used. It is pretty draconian. It is basically that: these are draconian powers and we are very concerned that they would be misused. Q327 Mr Singh: Do you accept that sometimes certain groups of young people hanging about, usually shops or whatever, do intimidate people? Mr Smith: Yes. Q328 Mr Singh: Do you think that there should be a power to deal with those people who are intimidating? Mr Smith: Yes. Q329 Mr Singh: What should that be? Mr Smith: Threatening behaviour is an offence, and we have a criminal law for a purpose. If you have a group of youths who are threatening people, they can be arrested and charged, and taken off the street in that sort of way. Q330 Mr Singh: If the threat is implicit, not explicit, what do you do then? Mr Smith: Then what does that mean? I think that --- Q331 Mr Singh: It means that the other people are genuinely afraid of those people. They cannot prove that they are doing anything to them, but they are genuinely in fear of them. Mr Skelsey: There is already legislation that covers the situation, or is likely to. You do not have to have an event take place; it can be a threat of a situation occurring. There are offences. There is section 5 and section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986, as well as more serious offences under the same Act. The offences are therefore already in existence. The trouble with dispersal powers is that there is the risk of discrimination. Effectively, the police will award themselves special powers where they consider a situation to be an anti-social hot spot, and there is a risk of discrimination when an offence is not actually being committed. If an offence is being committed, then they can be arrested and go through the criminal justice system in the usual way. Q332 Mr Singh: Surely the trouble is that the other piece of legislation you mention did not work. This is why the problem is getting bigger and bigger. Mr Skelsey: That is possibly the case, but that is putting more resources perhaps into enforcing the legislation that is already in existence. Mr Smith: What is the problem that is getting bigger and bigger? If people are committing an offence, they should be arrested and taken off the street. If they are not committing an offence - and we are talking about offences which, as Mr Skelsey is saying, include both action and prospective action - if there are still people legitimately falling through the gaps, then change the definition of the offence. The problem about draconian powers of dispersal - and someone has already used the phrase "mission creep" - is that they have enormous dangers in terms of being used arbitrarily; of police officers being put into situations where they are forced to use them. There is the potentially explosive nature of the discriminatory aspect. We have not come across this yet, but this legislation in relation to anti-social behaviour is so flexible that it could reflect prejudice in how it is used. It is so subjective that you would almost predict that it will. If you start to get the suggestion that these types of powers, including dispersal, are being used in a discriminatory way, would you be in the first rank with me, objecting to that? The looser they are, the more draconian they are, and the less the power is based upon the cause, the more dangerous they are. Q333 Mr Singh: A senior officer has to designate an area where those powers can be used. Secondly, that senior officer will presumably be accountable to his line management, to the Police Committee, and questions can be asked if those powers are used prejudicially - by MPs, by the local authority, and other people. So it is not as draconian and --- Mr Smith: I would want to make a simple point about the police. The police are often put into very difficult situations. I believe that the police should have powers to stop and search in relation to terrorism. I am surprised that that happens to allow them to designate areas where they can stop and search outside an arms fair. There is pressure on officers in difficult situations, and legislation which is brought in for one purpose is often escalated up. The looser that legislation is, the more likely that it is open to that. Q334 Mr Singh: So you would scrap this measure? Mr Smith: I have seen no evidence to suggest that existing powers are not enough. Q335 Mr Singh: Turning to you, Mr Howard, obviously that early clip round the ear has led to a very successful life! You are working in the field. Have you come across these dispersal powers being used? If so, how have they been used? Mr Howard: Perhaps I could quote you the comment from one north London borough commander, who shall remain nameless, but we work closely with them. It is about ASBOs generally but also includes the dispersal and exclusion powers. He told us that initially he had used those quite liberally. He is now thinking about backtracking from that. I cannot think of any other situation since the Second World War where there have been such severe powers, particularly for exclusion, in a time of non-emergency. The value of anything, as Mr Smith mentioned earlier, is in its scarcity value, is it not? If they are used liberally, they become devalued. It is their scarcity value and unusualness, if I can put it that way, which gives them that value. I will not say that they may never be appropriate or necessary; but, outside of a major civil emergency and wartime situation, I cannot think of any other period when there has been such a powerful piece of legislation at the disposal of police. Q336 Mr Singh: I presume that you agree with those views, Mr Garside. Mr Garside: Yes. It is worth bearing in mind that the dispersal powers are there to give police powers to manage the risk of minor disorder. They already have the powers, as Roger Smith has pointed out, to deal with genuine disorder. It seems to me that one of the questions is should the police have powers to disperse people simply because they are perceived to be threatening? I think the answer to that must be no. In their thirteenth report in the 2002-03 session, your colleagues on the Joint Human Rights Committee also said that they had profound concerns about these powers. I therefore think that they got it right. I think that JUSTICE is right on this. In that sense, I do not think that it is only JUSTICE. There is a broad range of opinion concerned about these powers. Q337 Mr Singh: Mr Smith, you talked earlier about some objective measures around ASBOs. Are there any legal safeguards which you think should be introduced into the legislation to satisfy your concerns about this? Mr Smith: I think that the definition should be tightened up. It is "caused" and I think that should be "reasonably caused"; I think that it should be reasonably foreseeable. You should, as you walk down the street, have some notion about whether your behaviour is likely to be regarded as anti-social: some advance way of saying, "How can I check?" in relation to that. There are issues about the order itself. It is a mandatory two-year order. I think that they should be much more flexible than that. There should be sentencing guidelines in relation to breach. There are a variety of safeguards which I think should be built in. Q338 Mr Singh: Turning to breaches, Mr Howard, you mentioned a figure of 33%, which is the accurate figure at the moment. What is causing these breaches? Is it the two‑year aspect and, if there was more flexibility, would there be fewer breaches, and what can we do about it? Mr Howard: I would suggest that there are probably some complex reasons, which we could perhaps try to categorise. There will no doubt be some woeful and wilful disregard and breaches. There is no doubt that there will be some of those. A second reason may be that some of the conditions that are put on are inappropriate and unenforceable. I know that the National Association of Probation Officers has given you evidence of certain instances where there are things like that, and I will not go into those. So they may be inappropriate. The third thing - and I reiterate the point that I made earlier - is that there are unrealistic expectations being made on people being able to comply with a particular ASBO without appropriate backup and support. Let me just say that a lot of people have drug problems and they can be dealt with through the criminal law and there are DTTOs and all those other things. But I just make the point - and I always make this point to people - that the World Health Organisation defines drug dependency and addiction as a mental health problem. We have decided to criminalize that, whereas internationally a recognised body defines it as a major health problem. Unless we provide that sort of support, with people with alcohol problems, with people with mental health problems and all those other things, then you will expect breaches to be made. With young people particularly, unrealistic expectations; they have major problems of literacy, numeracy and all those other things and unless those things are put in place - and again the Youth Justice Board has a number of interventions that are very, very successful, but there are not enough of them, simple as that - to back up action and even pre-empt an ASBO, then we will be recycling problems. David Winnick: My colleague has one or two other questions but we have another set of witnesses. Q339 Mr Singh: We will not have time for everybody to answer this, but to Mr Garside: is naming and shaming an appropriate aspect of ASBOs, or is it gratuitous? Mr Garside: I think that naming and shaming is an illustration of the problem of ASBOs because those who argue for it will say that if you do not name and shame how are people to know who has been given ASBOs and how should we be able to make sure that they are properly enforced? The degree to which that is genuinely about enforcement and the degree to which that is more about PR for ASBOs is a moot point actually. Our starting point for the naming and shaming of young people who are ASBO'd is not with the anti-social behaviour legislation, it is with a question about juvenile justice, and I think there are many concerns about the way that young people who come to the attention of the law on a range of issues, whether it is age of criminal responsibility, whether it is detention, whether it is the way that the court processes operate, there are a lot of concerns about that and naming and shaming is part of that. The question really is whether we consider young people to be different from adults and therefore afforded particular protections, and naming and shaming falls into that category, both because of the nature of ASBOs and what they are and also because of the broader principles about juvenile justice. Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I would seek some clarification because I think you were dodging and weaving in response to a question from my colleague, Mr Marsha Singh. It is a reality for us, as Members of Parliament, that we are dealing with constituents who are facing problems every day which are not criminal in nature but cause them serious concern and undermine the quality of their life. Your response to that, Mr Skelsey was that there are criminal acts that could be enforced to deal with this problem but the problem is that we have individuals who understand that only too well and operate just below the point where they could be subject to a prosecution. Indeed, that is the argument that is perpetuated by local authorities and the police for not taking action against these individuals. Are ASBOs then not the perfect opportunity to tackle such invidious behaviour which has systematically evaded prosecution by any other means? Is that not what it is here for? Q340 David Winnick: If you would answer that in half a minute each - not necessarily the six of you, but representing your organisations. Mr Smith? Mr Smith: I think the problem is that the discussion has brought up such a wide range of behaviour. There may be some behaviour like that. What I dispute as a question of fact is whether there is a group of youths sufficiently aware of the law and of their behaviour and the relation between the two. Q341 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Come to Liverpool, Mr Smith! Mr Smith: I imagine they are a relatively small group. Where ASBOs are being used it is generally in a slightly different situation. The thing about ASBOs - and I think probably on balance it is a helpful concept but it is a dangerous one, and the flexibility is the very danger of it - they will only work actually, paradoxically, the less you use them. Naming and shaming is a big example of that - the more you name and shame the less effect. We have probably passed the peak of the usefulness of naming and shaming. Q342 David Winnick: Mr Garside or Mr McMahon? Mr Garside: Our view is that ASBOs should simply be scrapped and that is the case both with the civil ASBOs, if you like, and the so-called CRASBOs. I think the real problem is - and it is a great shame, and we saw this just a few days ago with the launch of the Anti-Social Behaviour Action - that people in neighbourhoods who are suffering real problems are being directed in the direction of the anti-social behaviour strategy and the criminal justice system. We do not dispute that they need to be directed somewhere, but the direction they are being pointed in is not the right one. We need to restore the whole debate about the provision about good housing provision, about good mental health provision, about good educational provision, good public services generally, mental health services, youth services and all that, if we genuinely want to solve the kind of problems that we currently describe as anti-social behaviour. Q343 David Winnick: Thank you. Mr Dyer and Mr Howard? Mr Dyer: Anti-social behaviour did not start when the Crime and Disorder Act was on the statute book and subsequent legislation since either. Prior to that there has been a ton of legislation around for donkeys' years which has and has not been used - arguably probably not, actually - in the vast majority of cases to deal with the very issues that we are talking about. The ASBO, which is the one issue, not the whole issue, of anti-social behaviour legislation, is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and I would stand by that comment all day long and explore the issues around prevention and early intervention and ASBO plus until we all go home to the grave really. The idea as well that has been mooted, that one might criminalize young people as opposed to offer an alternative may be a draconian one, albeit not in every single case, is, I think, a moot point and that should be explored but possibly not today because the time does not exist. David Winnick: Can I thank you very much indeed for coming along? If you would like to listen to the next session then obviously you are perfectly free to do so.
Witnesses: Chris Fox, President, Association of Chief Police Officers, Peter Lewis, Director (Business Development), Crown Prosecution Service, Councillor Chris Clark, Deputy Chair, Local Government Association (also Liberal Democrat Group Leader), Stuart Douglas, Policy Advisor, Local Government Association, Cindy Barnett, Magistrates' Association and John Fassenfelt, Deputy Chair, Youth Courts Committee, Magistrates' Association, examined. Q344 David Winnick: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming along. We have had your submissions but if you feel you would like to make a very brief comment before we ask you questions then we will be pleased to hear what you have to say. Can I start with Mr Douglas or Mr Clark? Councillor Clark: I think the brief comment we would make in general is that we believe there are a number of issues which ought to be more joined together by government than they are at present, and for that reason we hope to agree with the Central Local Partnership tomorrow on the creation of a new sub-group between local and national government to deal with crime issues in that joined-up way. Q345 David Winnick: Mr Fox? Mr Fox: No, Mr Winnick, I will reserve my answers. Q346 David Winnick: Mr Lewis? Mr Lewis: The same. Q347 David Winnick: Ms Barnett? Ms Barnett: The same, thank you very much. Q348 David Winnick: And Mr Fassenfelt? Mr Fassenfelt: I support Ms Barnett. Q349 David Winnick: We have a number of questions to ask you and I will be putting them to you from my colleagues, but first of all I leave you to the tender mercy of Mrs Claire Curtis-Thomas. Q350 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Thank you very much everyone. Could I, at the onset of my questions, ask you to speak up, if it is possible? We are having a bit of a problem today with the microphones. You have just made an observation, Mr Clark, about the establishment of the Central Local Partnership and my ears pricked up immediately. By way of introduction could you let me know who is going to be invited to join that partnership and, crucially, as far as I am concerned, will it involve the magistrates? Councillor Clark: Firstly the body itself, the upper body, Central Local Partnership, is a grouping which is chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and we meet once a quarter with him and a range of Ministers and around six or seven leading members from the local government side, and officers. We try to bridge issues between central and local government. For example, we worked very closely with each other in the last year on local government finance and helped to agree a package of changes there. It has a number of sub-groups and the proposal is to add one simply to get together the various ministries and local government dimensions which have a bearing on crime issues. Because it is mainly central and local government it does not specifically include magistrates but it would be a valuable suggestion that there ought to be a forum within which other dimensions come into play. Q351 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Thank you. That leads me very nicely on to my questions about localisation of policy. So can I start with a general question, please - and I would be grateful for a response from Mr Fox - which is, how useful is the current concept and definition of anti-social behaviour? Does it need to be objective or is it fine as it is? Mr Fox: From my perspective I think it is fine as it is because what we need is a local agreement about what anti-social behaviour is because anti-social behaviour is exemplified locally in different ways. It might be to do with alcohol and binge drinking, which we have heard a lot about, in a town centre; it might be about motorcycling across parks or behaviour in children's playgrounds in a public space in another totally different community. So I think we need to leave anti-social behaviour with a wide definition but working together, as Mr Clark mentioned, and locally agree what are the issues in that particular part of the world, which will require different people to be involved in the solution. Q352 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: At the moment, Mr Fox, we have a number of organisations which have been constituted locally - the Criminal Justice Partnership and so on and so forth - so given that we have those various structures do they have sufficiently broad remit to accommodate your proposals, or do we need to extend their terms of reference in order to embrace your aspirations for giving local people a voice? Mr Fox: I think the infrastructure is there. What sometimes are not there are the distinct objectives for each of the partners. Let me explain that rather differently. There are people at various different tables looking at this problem but the organisation they come from does not always have a specific clarity of objective about anti-social behaviour, so they might be at the table but it may not be one of their big pieces of business at the moment; and that is where we see the central government coming in to bring all the different pieces of work, whether you be from the housing department, the health authority, the police, and it is accepted that anti-social behaviour is an issue of importance that you will work to solve because in some cases that is not specific. Q353 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I think one of the general concerns raised about the response that you have is that it seems to give a presumption to people power and that local residents, left to their own devices, could begin to describe what is a perfectly acceptable legitimate activity as an anti-social activity. How do you strike the right balance between what constitutes unreasonable behaviour and what we should be educating members of society into understanding is perfectly acceptable behaviour? How do you get that balance within that structure? Councillor Clark: That is difficult because you have hit a particular nerve there which is particularly relevant to young people. Lots of older people feel that a gathering of young people might be threatening and might be anti-social, when in fact it is something we all did when we were that age. So it is an important piece of thought. To me it boils down to a very good understanding of a neighbourhood, about what is normal behaviour. Anti-social behaviour is not just in existence, there are activities associated with a gathering or with a particular part of the neighbourhood, which people can obviously see to be anti-social. You can see the actual evidence of anti-social behaviour. That is about a negotiation - not a consultation - with the local people and negotiation about what it really is and who has some accountability for fixing it, because local people also have accountability for fixing it. Q354 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So the existing criminal partnerships, the Criminal Justice Partnerships, are a suitable vehicle for embracing the various bodies, the bodies of concern? Mr Fox: I would prefer the Crime and Disorder Partnerships as the main driver. Q355 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: And you feel reasonably comfortable with the involvement of the public in those? Mr Fox: I think we are moving towards them. At the moment I do not think the public are connected to those; I think those often take a very broad view of a neighbourhood or a local authority area, where in fact anti-social behaviour may be very different on an estate or in a town centre, as I have described. So I think it has to be more local than that. Q356 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So the involvement of the public in the Crime and Disorder Partnerships is a positive thing? Mr Fox: It is. Q357 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Do other members of the panel have a view about that? Is that appropriate? Councillor Clark: I am very much encouraged and agree with much of what is being said, and also Mr Fox drew out the issue of housing and there are other social issues that ought to be joined in, and we would like to see these considerations in an even wider setting, including health and other dimensions, which are included in, for example, some of the best local strategic partnerships and seem to be being envisaged by the local government Minister in his ten-year vision, where he talks about local area agreements and seems to be thinking in terms of people putting their budgets together and their solutions together in a joined-up way. Some of the quite excellent research by the Social Exclusion Unit has consistently discovered that the same individuals and groups within communities are the ones who have low pay, live on benefits and are in the worst of the housing, et cetera, and you need to bring in the positive dimensions as well. Some of the people - and you touched on young people but acknowledged it is broader - quite often and rightly say, "We ain't got nothing to do," and there are some places where that is totally true, and you need to have both sides of that coin. I personally am greatly interested in schemes which try to, along with these controlling mechanisms, seek to engage young people. On my patch it was very good that some of the local policemen started playing football on Sundays with some of the lads and found a way of seeing each other as human beings and not just a problem and a way of dealing with it. Q358 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Mr Clark, you have walked us rather nicely into the next set of questions, which is the response made by all the authorities to anti-social behaviour. It would generally fall around the general groupings: diversion (the football), the non-formal, the formal and then family interventions. Would you as a group of people agree that those broad categories of response embrace all responses, and if they do not what is being omitted there? Secondly, where are we doing well in terms of responses to anti-social behaviour and where should we putting our resources in terms of supporting those areas in which we are currently not working hard? Mr Lewis: I wonder if I could respond, please? We see it as absolutely essential that the enforcement end of this, which is particularly about Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, is seen as part of the tiered approach; so that we do not go straight to an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, we do look at the broad range of measures to combat anti-social behaviour, many of which will involve support and contracts with people to keep them out of trouble. I am not saying that we use Anti-Social Behaviour Orders as the last resort, but that we do not go to them automatically and that we do see an overall picture of tackling the general problem, of which enforcement is but a part and not the first answer or the only answer. Q359 David Winnick: Could I clarify one point? As far as these orders are concerned, they have to come through the Crown Prosecution Service, is that right? Mr Lewis: There are two sorts of order, sir. There is a stand-alone order that a local authority or a police authority on its own can apply for, and then there is a second order which we apply for following a conviction for a criminal offence. So two orders: one that is predominantly applied for by the local authority and sometimes the police, with their own solicitors, and we get involved in orders on conviction but we also prosecute all breaches. So that is breaches of either order, all breaches of Dispersal Orders, all breaches of Closure Orders for a crack house, all breaches of Parental Orders. So we are very much involved in the enforcement, but there is still a discretion for local authorities and indeed the police and others, Social Landlords, who can look at seeking orders - stand alone orders. Q360 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I am assuming then, is there a general agreement that there should be a process and then right at the end of that process there should be an Anti-Social Behaviour Order? Mr Douglas: I think the point on Anti-Social Behaviour Orders is that they are the end of the line in many ways, simply because now you need a criminal standard of proof when you actually take an order, albeit a civil order. I think a lot of the local authorities that we consult with, they are actually not too bothered about that; where it might be difficult, in terms of public expectation, of a local authority being able to go out and get an order the same day or the next day is clearly not the reality - they are complex things. I think local government generally is very mindful of the consequences of that civil order on somebody if they then breach it and you have not had a qualitative process leading through to it. All the way through from the White Paper through the rapid progress of the Anti-Social Behaviour Bill I think every LGO had briefing at every stage. So to highlight it, we felt that there was over emphasis on enforcement and while enforcement is very important within the whole context of tackling anti-social behaviour there was not enough focus given to prevention and rehabilitation, and I think that has been our consistent line. We were delighted and I suppose somewhat surprised when the Prolific and Other Offender Priority Offender Strategy was launched last April, which quite clearly encompasses prevention and rehabilitation, and in effect that strategy, the priority offender part of that tends to be not those people who have been convicted a large number of times who would be the priority offenders, but tends to be the people who would be committing anti-social behaviour, where it is more based on intelligence from local communities and so on. So we are slowly seeing a shift in that from a Home Office end. If I can make one brief point on your earlier point about structures? A number of authorities have complained to us that the establishment of local Criminal Justice Boards did not have any mechanism between that Board and the Local Crime and Disorder Partnership, and there is perhaps the whole emphasis about community engagement within the criminal justice system and within Local Crime Reduction Partnerships. Of course, perhaps an opportunity was lost. The Prolific and Priority Offenders Scheme does seem to be making some of those links but it is certainly a point that some of our authorities would like to make. Q361 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So more joined-up locally then. Mr Fox? Mr Fox: I just wanted to pick up one point you made there. I agree entirely, it was our philosophy that has just been discussed there about prevention at the one end, education, health, diversion development, trying to prevent the behaviour. Then there is the enforcement, which is not just anti-social behaviour, it could be a number of other charges around public order and behaviour. But there is a third piece, which is about the sanction and the sanction needs to be very clear and sending the right messages. So it needs to be a tough sanction but with something that is solving the problem because if this is an addiction problem or some sort of family problem there needs to be a way to resolve it. I would not want to think that enforcement was the total solution. The sanction is important and magistrates need to sometimes understand that what might be seen as quite a trivial charge standing alone is quite significant in terms of a neighbourhood's view of anti-social behaviour. Q362 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: For clarity, Mr Fox, give me an example of a disorder and a sanction which addresses that. You mentioned the family; give me some example of that. Mr Fox: It is difficult to give specifics but I will talk through a possible. Sometimes there needs to be a hard sanction to give a hard message that that sort of behaviour is not going to be tolerated in the behaviour, and that the majority of people in that neighbourhood totally agree that this should be dealt with. But if this is about a youngster that has some other problem - an alcohol problem, a drug problem or indeed a family problem that is about the management of the family - then that sanction should be accompanied by some method of dealing with that piece, helping perhaps a single parent to solve a problem or helping a youngster organise their life to get to school perhaps, rather than truanting and creating havoc in a shopping centre or whatever it may be. So it is having a single sanction that says, "Do not do that again because this is what happens" but a solution sanction that says, "Now we are going to help you so that it does not happen again." Q363 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Thank you. I just want to ask a question about is there a measure, a general public measure which we can look at to determine whether are not we are making any progress as a nation with anti-social behaviour? Mr Lewis: If I may again? We can look at the British Crime Survey, which I know is not perfect but there is a survey about how concerned people are about crime. They take a wide view on a regular basis and I think that is a good measure because I know it is about perception, but it is about people's perception about how much high level and very serious anti-social behaviour there is, and I know that there are regular samplings of that and I think that is a good measure. Q364 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: It may be a good measure but is it fair that the general public still think that there is a problem with anti-social behaviour and tackling it? Is that a fair perception at this time? Mr Lewis: If I may again? I think it is getting better because there has been a move downward, a downward trend. It was at one stage, two years' ago, about 21% of those sampled were very concerned or believed they were seeing a lot of very serious anti-social behaviour. It is now decreasing to about 16% so I think there is a movement. But I do think that part of that is that there is now a greater willingness by the authorities to tackle this and I think for a long time there was not, and I think that affected public confidence. Q365 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Thank you very much. Mr Clark? Councillor Clark: I was going to add that you asked your question in, I thought, a slightly sceptical way and I think that scepticism could be well founded. I perceive evidence that the Crime Survey can produce more accurate results than some other statistics but it does seem to me to need to be based on absolutely objective measures of things that have happened. The perception issue is difficult because, as you are aware, if an issue is talked about a lot in the media then it is higher on people's feelings than when it is not. So the issues that people are bothered about do actually vary from time to time. If unemployment is rising they are worried about jobs; if it is not rising they are more worried about health, et cetera. So there does need to be some care about what constitutes perception here. Mr Fox: I disagree with that slightly. People locally are very clear about what matters to them, and that is where we in the police service have got it wrong - and I guess government and police authorities got it wrong - where we concentrated on bulk crime. We really were very successful in reducing bulk crime, but every day people are coming out of their front doors and seeing something that they do not like, that makes them feel and fear. That is a perception and I think if you ask the questions carefully, as the British Crime Survey is now trying to do, about what locally matters to you. People are pretty perceptive --- Mr Lewis: I would agree with that. Mr Fox: ... and we then have eight projects going on around the different parts of the country doing just this, where local people are being very specific about what it is, what it is they can see and feel that upsets them, and then locally us and the other agencies trying to fix those things. So it is that very careful negotiation with local people. Ms Barnett: Could I possibly come in on that point and add the fact that I think it is very difficult to deal with figures, especially when they are national figures, because we have heard from earlier witnesses that if you deal with a number of, for instance, Anti-social Behaviour Orders, that can either be seen as a positive or a negative, depending on which side you are coming from. Again, I agree entirely with Mr Fox that from the point of view of local perception that that is a very valuable view of whether things are improving or not, but there is also the national perception that everyone has through the media and that is something that cannot be ignored. I think there are two strands that come up the whole time: how people feel in their local communities where there can be real and obvious evidence of improvement, but against that you have to put the fact that the national media may well be using anti-social behaviour as flavour of the week or the month, which might leave a slightly negative perception to counter that. Q366 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Thank you. I have one final question - and we touched on it earlier on - which is the involvement of magistrates and the courts in tackling anti-social behaviour locally. What knowledge do you have of positive engagement of the magistrates' representatives and the magistrates and the courts, and proactivity from the magistrates and the courts in terms of interacting with local authorities and other bureaucracies charged with tackling anti-social behaviour? Ms Barnett: I can say very firmly from the magistrates' point of view that that is not our role; our role as magistrates is to deal with the cases that come to us in court. When we are not being magistrates we are ordinary members of the community who live in our local communities and therefore do understand what is going on and may well, as private citizens, be subject to or have personal knowledge of anti-social behaviour. From the point of view of what we do in court, that has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. You mentioned earlier - I am sorry, I am not sure whether it was you but certainly the question came up - of our involvement or otherwise in the Crime and Disorder Partnerships and other local groups. That is something that is being looked at specifically - it has been looked at for a very long time. There are difficulties over sentences at all levels, both the Magistrates' and Crown Courts becoming too involved or involved in the wrong way in local groups where it might be used as a vehicle for exerting pressure on sentences. So it will be very important for any involvement and interaction to be done at a strategic level with no specific examples being discussed. Q367 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: You do recognise though, Ms Barnett, that there is huge criticism of the role of the Magistrates' Court in relation to anti-social behaviour and the fact that magistrates seem to be disconnected from the entire process and not partners in tackling the serious problems that localities face? Ms Barnett: I think we find it rather extraordinary that this should be used for anti-social behaviour as opposed to any other form of activity - criminal activity or, in this case, injunctions and orders that come before the courts. We are, as I say, sentencers within the courts and I have not heard that sort of comment made in relation to burglary or assault or anything else like that, and not necessarily from the point of view of the other courts. Why it should be different for anti-social behaviour is something that I do not think is just. Q368 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Mr Fox, finally? Mr Fox: There are some magistrates' clerks around the country who run briefing and development sessions for magistrates, some of whom actually take them out to show them what is happening at 2 o'clock in the morning, let us say, in a particular part of town. Because while those magistrates do live in their communities they often do not live in that particular community at that time of day. That is not the only part of the training; they would also look at how a custody suite works; they would also look at how victim support in a Crown Court waiting room might be, to get a feel for exactly what it is like to be there as a witness or a member of the public. I would really recommend that. I have to say that when I joined the Service 32 years ago that that used to happen routinely but it does not any more, and I think that is a weakness. Magistrates should be able to see what local people can see at that time of day, and make their own choice in court. Court and evidence is totally independent. Mr Douglas: Could I just add to that? We do think it is very important that magistrates have some connection with Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, certainly perhaps not at an operational level of those partnerships, but at a strategic level that I think would be very welcome. We do get the argument thrown at CDRPs that magistrates cannot get engaged with CDRPs because of their need to remain apart from that, and yet they sit on Police Authorities currently, so we do not see why that should be. They could have that role to play. And we certainly need to get better with mechanisms, and we know some good examples of practice out there where, for example, when ASBO applications are being taken through the courts the prosecuting solicitor is making the magistrates, that Bench, aware of what the local CDRP strategic priorities are and so on. We certainly found that there is not a problem with individual magistrates; it tends to be the mechanisms that are currently a bit cautious about that engagement of magistrates in CDRP working. David Winnick: Mr Prosser. Q369 Mr Prosser: Ms Barnett, you may feel as if you are in the dock this afternoon with all these remarks being made, but I just want to pursue it a little longer. We get a lot of anecdotal stories about police officers or local agencies or even council ASBO units being very frustrated by putting a lot of work and effort into bringing about an ASBO or even bringing about a conviction for anti-social behaviour activities and then being frustrated by rather inappropriate sentences or reactions. For instance, the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group said that they are "continually frustrated by the perversity of some judgments and the lack of consistency between courts. Often the effects," they say, "are of such inconsistency as to seen to be to the advantage of the perpetrator." What do you say to that? Ms Barnett: In the first place "they" must be referring to specific cases; I have no knowledge of them and could not possibly comment on them if I did have knowledge of them. Q370 David Winnick: Could you keep your voice raised, please? Ms Barnett: I am sorry. From the view of inconsistency I think it must be stressed - and it cannot be stressed too heavily - that each individual case before each individual court is exactly that, individual, and there is no such thing as an automatic Anti-Social Behaviour Order, nor is there such a thing as an automatic sentence for a breach of that; each case has to be looked at in terms of its individual circumstances. That inevitably, with every sentence of every level of court, is going to mean that at some stage there is going to be criticism and that is something of which we are well aware. I do not accept - I am sure you will not be surprised to hear - that it is a question of our - if that is the implication - favouring the perpetrator, not taking it seriously enough or not having the sense to deal with it sensibly. What we have found in very many cases is that the standard of prosecution, if I can put it that way, or presentation of information to the court, has similarly been extremely variable across the country. And the other basic and fundamental principle is that we can only deal with what is before us in court; we cannot deal with guesses or hypothesis, it has to be the evidence that is there. Q371 David Winnick: A most unfair allegation, I am sure, against the magistrates - that you are out of touch? Ms Barnett: I cannot see why that should be said; I do not accept that it is the case. We certainly welcome all forms of awareness training, certainly of formal training - we have it all the time. We are aware of what goes on but it is fundamental that we have to deal with each case according to that case and not a general perception that may come from the Press, from the media or from people who would like us to have done something different. Q372 David Winnick: Indeed, could you not say, Ms Barnett, without putting the words into your mouth, that magistrates themselves come from areas where there is a good deal of anti-social behaviour? Ms Barnett: A very large number of us do, yes. Q373 David Winnick: Therefore the accusation - being the devil's advocate - that I have just put to you, is even more unfair? Ms Barnett: As I said, I do not accept it and I am sure my colleague would support me fully on that; so, no, we cannot accept that. Mr Lewis: May I say something, Mr Winnick? The courts have agreed to set up Anti-Social Response Courts to help us to deal with these problems, so in each court there will be a champion, one of the court clerks, who is responsible for arranging response courts so that we can get cases listed if we have a block of anti-social behaviour applications or we have a lot of breaches, so that we can have them listed together. Magistrates are increasingly happy for us to help in the training. Of course, we absolutely support the need for absolute independence and impartiality but what we are finding increasingly is that there is a good debate going on with magistrates saying to us, "You are not giving us the information we need so that we can make fair and independent decisions," but, equally, where we can say, "We do not understand some of these decisions," so that there can be a dialogue about it. To us the position seems to be getting better and these response courts do seem to be a really good initiative. Ms Barnett: Could I come in at that point to add something on Anti-Social Behaviour Response Courts? This is going to be slightly difficult with my colleague beside me, but it is not a statutory thing - there is no such thing as an Anti-Social Behaviour Response Court as there is, for instance, a Youth Court or a Family Court. If it is a term - and obviously it is being used - to show that anti-social behaviour breaches or applications for injunctions are going to be heard in that particular court, that is a listing matter. Again, it is not and could never be a question of a particular group of magistrates in a particular court dealing with such applications differently from another court up the road. If we are concentrating on specialist ASBO prosecutors then I think that is a different matter, but I must sound a note of warning over the interpretation of the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Response Courts. Q374 Mr Singh: Mr Clark, the LGA is arguing, as local authorities do, for more funding to tackle anti-social behaviour. The Home Office is saying that that is not the issue, that you are only being asked to do what you should have been doing before, the funding is there, get on with it with the new powers you have. How do you respond to that? Councillor Clark: I must say that the Central Local Partnership, in which we meet with the Deputy Prime Minster and others, has been encouraging to us in the last year or so, in which he continually asserts that he is not prepared to see fellow Secretaries of State and Ministers place further obligations on to councils without the money to pay for them, because he is aware above anybody, in our perception, of the impact these things have on council tax payers if funds are not made available to meet responsibilities. Q375 Mr Singh: Are you saying that tackling anti-social behaviour is a new responsibility for local authorities? Councillor Clark: Some dimensions of it are, and some of the later questions that we are aware of bear on this. There are other social changes that can have an impact that need to be dealt with. For example, we have some common ground for Police Forces in apprehension that the longer drinking licences may well give rise to further anti-social behaviour and any growth in volume clearly has a cost implication. These are difficult issues already for councils to address. It is one thing to keep streets clean and property well maintained in the context of what you might refer to as "normal behaviour", but if in addition you have to deal with aggressive, vandalising damaging behaviour that clearly has cost implications, and you may well have some circumstances in which it is difficult for staff or operators to undertake the kind of things you would want them to do in keeping places clean, tidy and decent. Q376 Mr Singh: As Social Landlords, do you think the local authorities have a responsibility to ensure that the tenants on those council estates were behaving in a manner befitting everybody else's behaviour? Councillor Clark: Touching on one of the things we considered before coming to talk to you is the Section 17 obligations, which we understand were laid and adopted very readily with very little consideration in Parliament about how extensive they could be in their impact and how expensive they could be in their wish or need to comply. So I think it still is the case that some obligations can be expressed in deceptively simple terms that may well have costs associated with them. Mr Douglas: Just a couple of things on costs. Certainly in the case of local authorities as a landlord, there has historically been a lot of work developed around anti-social behaviour reductions that have grown up over the last 20 years in that area; a lot of legislation is based on a lot of development around housing legislation. That deals with it in the public sector and you can argue through housing revenue account and so on that local authorities have a duty to look after those tenants that are theirs. But the new burdens of dealing with these issues within the private sector housing are clearly falling on local authorities to deal with. The best examples nationally we have usually tend to fall in deprived inner city areas where there is usually regeneration, finance and so on in which they can put specialist teams to tackle areas through the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, and so on. It is creating a problem particularly for small councils who do not have the scale of the problem necessarily to warrant having specialist teams to deal with it. The other resource implications which are just starting to come through - Individual Support Orders for young people were very welcome. If there are a lot of ASBOs on young people in an area that will create pressure on youth offending services and also on children's service departments. Parenting Orders are now given as a matter of course to juveniles - again, welcome, but if you have a rush of those through the courts in the space of a few weeks you are creating potential burdens for departments which are already stretched. So I think there are some new issues around cost. Clearly there are a number of things which councils should have been doing anyway and they have always accepted that, really. Q377 Mr Singh: Given the fact that no new money is going to be thrown at you in the near future, how well are we doing in terms of local authorities? How well are the local authorities liaising or working in partnership with other agencies? Who is taking the lead in these coordinating meetings and do you support the appointment of anti-social behaviour coordinators as some authorities have done? Councillor Clark: On the first point about how well they are working, we find that the best partnerships are working very well indeed, but some are weak and not working so well. I was touching on earlier that the ten-year vision on which the local government Minister is consulting just now, in local government we are encouraged by the indication of seeing local councils as well placed to show leadership, but of course there is not a completely common pattern of local government and so the best is good and the rest needs to be drawn to that level. I think Stuart wants to add something. Mr Douglas: I think certainly over the last ten years or so we are now seeing that it is not just the housing department that will have close corroboration with local police, it is actually a whole range of departments from Chief Executives' departments through the whole range of services that local government provides. I think in the best examples of crime partnership working you are almost seeing a dialogue between local Police Commanders and Chief Executives on a very frequent basis in terms of tapping a whole range of issues, not just anti-social behaviour, and I think that is to be encouraged. If I could just give an example? Through the Bill, Members will be aware of the Dispersal Orders clause and the Local Government Association fought very hard to have agreement between the local authority in the area and the police about using Dispersal Orders. So there was a double bang they would both agree to that. Certainly some of the civil servants were not keen on that, and they said there was no precedent for local government having a veto almost on a police power. But clearly that clause went through and was won, and we have had something like 400 plus Dispersal Orders, so clearly the fear of local government interfering with the use of that power in an area has not happened. I think the whole point is that local government can clearly play a part in Dispersal Orders of dealing with the problem long-term. What do you actually do with the people that you are displacing from the area? David Winnick: I think we have the point, Mr Douglas. Time is a bit short and we want to try to get through by half past four, quarter to five, and we certainly have the point. Mrs Dean. Q378 Mrs Dean: Just a quick question on cost. Has there not been a hidden cost in the past in both terms of financial and social? For instance, with neighbour disputes, where people have suffered for a long time and Environmental Health and other officers have been involved for a long time, that can now be met with Anti-Social Behaviour Orders? Mr Douglas: Certainly the cost of the orders, which are estimated anywhere between £1000 and £5000 - and Home Office research would back that up - are a new burden on the authorities but there are savings you can make in terms of if you try to quantify it locally. For example, the reduction in void properties you have, the reduction in people who are on lists wanting to leave an area clearly all carry costs, and they are not always quantified accurately by authorities in terms of their savings. Or there is a difficulty about will those savings be reinvested in further crime reduction, et cetera? But clearly there can be savings in an area. Q379 David Winnick: Mr Fox, in particular I would like to ask you a few questions regarding alcohol related disorders, and I am sure you will not be surprised that you are going to be asked these matters. We have heard very recently from the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire that he has at times 40 police officers available to deal with 100,000 drinkers coming out of pubs and clubs. Do you feel that the problem can be resolved by more police officers? Mr Fox: It depends what you are talking about "the problem". The problem here is being reflected in two ways: is it about extending hours or is it about behaviour? Our view is simply this, that in the late 90s a number of parts of the licensing mechanism abrogated their responsibilities and town centres were planned for nighttime economies and licenses were issued inappropriately, with over saturation, in the face of massive legal combat by the industry itself. So we find ourselves in a position where we have saturated areas of alcohol. This is not about extended hours, this is about behaviour that exists now, and we have to deal with that and that means dealing with it across the piece. Nottingham has 110,000 and I think Central Westminster has another 110,000 and that is just two places. You cannot enforce your way out of that problem; enforcement has to be part of the whole process. I think what we are saying is that we have to get to grips with strategic planning of town centres, with the issuing of the licences, with the behaviour of the customers and the behaviour of the management. Enforcement plays its part and sanction plays its part but it is those two middle pieces - the behaviour of the customer, the behaviour of the management - and at the moment we believe that the industry is not regulating itself, that it is making money at the cost of human misery and the public purse and, to be honest, the strategic planning process has been worse than useless. Q380 David Winnick: What do you say to the argument, Mr Fox, that is now being put forward, that extending hours, whether it is 24 hours - although in practice hardly any pubs are likely to be open 24 hours, but nevertheless far more than at the moment day and night - and the argument is that instead of 100,000 drinkers coming out of pubs and clubs at around a certain time it will be staggered, against which of course there are those who will say that what will happen is that a good number of those who come out of pubs and clubs worse for drink will simply go to other places, which will be open. What do you say to that? Mr Fox: The flexibility of the hours is part of a solution, but only if it is planned properly because at the moment at night we do not have transport in most places around the country, we do not have outlets, we do not have public toilets. So you have people milling about and if you are going to extend hours you have to have an infrastructure that can deal with it. Q381 David Winnick: Which you are saying does not exist at the moment? Mr Fox: Not everywhere. There may be shining examples but there are not many centres where you can find the toilets open at midnight, buses home after midnight, places where you can get non-alcoholic drinks and food - they are very, very limited. So there may not be many places that take up the 5 a.m. drinking option, but I suspect a number will stretch to 3 o'clock and so on, just to stretch their edge, if you like. Staggering it will be a solution, if the infrastructure is there, if the premises are properly managed and people are not being served rolling drunk and tossed out on the street and not being served underage. It all has to work. It is not about the hours; there are so many pieces of this jigsaw that have to work. Q382 David Winnick: The Licensing Act 2003, after some delay, is due to come into operation on 7th of next month, leading to a position where in November there will be a changeover completely, which obviously you know very well, Mr Fox. Do you feel that there should be any delay in the implementation? After all, you have just told us that there should be the structure involved for extended hours, which does not in the main exist now. So what is your view as an association? Should it be postponed for a short while, a long while? Mr Fox: I do not think that postponing it solves the problem. We have a problem whether it ends at 2 a.m. or 5 a.m. We should be solving that problem and if we focused on solving that problem the hours would be a secondary issue. So I do not think postponement helps at the moment because we have this problem from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. in any event. We have to grip the underlying causes of this. Q383 David Winnick: You talked about the infrastructure which is necessary. Mr Fox: Correct. Q384 David Winnick: But that is not going to happen between now and 7th February, is it? Mr Fox: But the Act puts a responsibility on to local authorities now to take all parts of the process to themselves - the strategic plan, the issue of licences, to some extent the administration enforcement of those licences. All those things may come to work. The infrastructure is not there but it is not there with the existing hours, it does not exist now after midnight, so are we saying reduce the hours? No, we are not, we are saying get to grips with the behaviour of the people who are using licensed premises and managing them. Q385 David Winnick: You refer in your papers to a phrase, "The polluter should pay." Mr Fox: Yes. Q386 David Winnick: Which means that the owners of public houses up and down the country should make a contribution against which they say they are already making a contribution through taxes and rates. Mr Fox: I would not necessarily want to see every premises making a contribution because most are run perfectly properly. There are certain places that are not and somehow we need to identify those places or those areas that are requiring extra attention. I think if I recall, the Act had a regulatory impact assessment which suggested that the industry would save £2 billion over ten years because of the change in this Act. I do not know where those figures came from; they were just in the papers. Therefore, if areas or premises are causing problems of a nature that requires extra attention, whether it is in Accident & Emergency or police officers, then I do not see a reason why they should not pay. That will certainly focus their mind on cleaning up their premises. Q387 David Winnick: When you said, Mr Fox, that you do not consider postponement the solution, a number of Chief Constables, who obviously must be members of your Association, have given a different viewpoint, have they not? Mr Fox: They would, we all are individuals, but the majority of our members take the view that the hours are of secondary consideration; it is the current behaviour and the behaviour that exists now. The hours to extend it do give us an extra problem, but we are trying to focus minds on dealing with the conduct of what is publicly known as "binge drinking". Q388 David Winnick: Which is quite a problem, is it not? Mr Fox: It is. Q389 David Winnick: Before we come to the next section, on extending hours, does your Association have a view, Mr Clark? Councillor Clark: I have a couple of quick comments. The comment about "polluter pays", it is my recollection that some legislation on environmental protection incorporated that into existing legislation. So, for example, a local authority has the power, as I understand it, to say to a takeaway restaurant, "You are a cause of litter on the pavements, you must contribute to the cost of clearing it up," and, similarly, I believe, a bank auto teller machine if the slips drop on the pavement. I think that is precisely similar and it is reasonable that the polluter should pay. But it is back to the points that I was making earlier. When we asked the government for this joint grouping to deal with these issues, to get them better related, the alcohol issue was quite central to it because, for example, as was being touched upon, the government is passing new responsibilities to local authorities to process licences and leaving a £40 million gap in the difference between the fees and the costs of producing such licences. Taking another dimension, I was surprised that the county town in the county where I live hit the headlines because it had an establishment where you could pay £8 to enter and drink whatever you wanted all night with no further payment. The local council said, "This is ridiculous, this is promoting drunkenness. Why do we not have a voluntary agreement between the clubs and bars to set a minimum price for each drink?" Quick as a flash the DTI stepped in and said, "You cannot do that - anti competitive." These issues need to be seen jointly. You touched on the consultation on licence fees; the consultation document is riddled with references to saving the industry money. That should not have been the objective. The objective should be managing these premises and these events in a way that is less destructive to people and communities. That should have been the incentive, not saving this very profitable industry costs in the costs of their licences. Q390 David Winnick: Ms Barnett, many of the cases - a good number, I imagine - that come before magistrates in the morning are those related to alcohol abuse and other such matters related to alcohol. What is the view of the Magistrates' Association about extending hours, which could lead to many of these pubs staying open much later than now? Ms Barnett: I do not think as an Association that that is something on which we would have a view. Obviously the Licensing Act means that the role that the magistrates used to play in licensing has now passed or is now passing to the local authorities. That is something that we opposed but it has happened. From the point of view of the legislation I truly am not trying to duck the question, but we will continue to deal with the number of cases that come to the courts where alcohol is a factor in exactly the same way as before. Q391 David Winnick: Mr Fox, one last question in this section. You have recommended the creation of a National Inspectorate of Licensing. You look puzzled, but I believe I am right? I can refer you to the page number. Mr Fox: Please do. I do not recall it, but, I am sorry, I interrupted you. Q392 David Winnick: The argument in favour, do you have it there? Mr Fox: I do not recall my Association doing that. One of my colleagues may have done. Q393 David Winnick: The clerk will tell you what page in a moment. Mr Fox: The point we were trying to make was that there needs to be a joined-up type of inspection. There are Inspectorates that exist already, whether it is the Inspector of Constabulary, whether it is the Inspector of the Prosecution, whether it is the local authority inspection process or indeed the Audit Commission. They should be tasked with specific objectives to look at the process from cradle to grave, but with a central direction. At the moment they do not have them. Q394 David Winnick: In your submission on page 10 you do say, "We would support a unified national database of licensed premises and persons, rather than a series of local ones. We also support a national inspectorate for licensing." That is at paragraph j on page 10. But do not worry; what I want to do is to come back to Mr Clark. The government says that under the Licensing Act local authorities, which will now have the powers - not a national one or the police any longer, but local authorities - can take into account the views of residents and the police. Do you not consider that a positive step? Councillor Clark: Certainly, but what has been going on is the need to ensure that the fees that are charged can be adequate and the mechanisms can be managed. For example, it just so happens that we have been talking to the Minister about it today, to make sure that the costs can be fully recovered and to make sure that processes can actually be managed, and work is going on now to make sure that those two things can be achieved. David Winnick: I think I would not be exaggerating when I say that this particular matter will continue to cause some comment and controversy and we shall see. The last series of questions are from my colleague Mrs Dean. We want to finish at quarter to five, so if you could make your answers rather brief. Q395 Mrs Dean: I think most of my questions are directed at Mr Lewis but others may want to comment. The CPS is currently in the middle of its Anti-Social Behaviour Project. I presume that relates to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders on prosecution; is that correct? Mr Lewis: Yes, that is primarily where we are involved, but as I mentioned in response to an earlier question we do want to make sure that when we are looking at those applications that we have talked to the other people involved, particularly our police colleagues, to make sure that this is part of a tiered, targeted approach, so that it is a proper order to make in those circumstances. We have very clear prohibitions that we can prosecute if there are any breaches. So that is the focus, very much of it. Q396 Mrs Dean: Am I right in thinking that that project does not cover the whole of the country? Mr Lewis: Actually our project does cover the whole of the country. What we were lucky to do was to secure some funding from the Home Office actually to get ASB expert prosecutors in 12 areas - and we subsequently extended it to 13 - and that has proved very useful. But it was a limited amount of funding and it only went so far. But we are interested in what is happening everywhere and we have a plan and a programme to raise our game and train people across the board. Q397 Mrs Dean: Effectively that is being rolled out across the country? Mr Lewis: Yes. Q398 Mrs Dean: What are the main results so far? Mr Lewis: The main results are of course that we are looking very closely at the number of orders that have been obtained, but like other speakers have said, we do not believe that the answer to this is to simply have more Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, it is about what impact we are having on anti-social behaviour generally. So we have been looking at the British Crime Survey, we have seen that there is a positive trend there in people feeling that the issue is being tackled. But one of main concerns was that we were seen by communities to be responding to anti-social behaviour. We felt we had not been seen to be doing that in the past, so we see one of the success measures is that we are out there, we are doing something, we are meeting with communities and we are playing a part in that agenda. Q399 Mrs Dean: How would you monitor the effectiveness of the new prosecutors in the Specialist Courts? Mr Lewis: I have a report from each of the prosecutors every month about the activity that they are involved in, the particular prosecutions that they are dealing with, how many people they have charged during that process, the liaison that they have entered into. We also meet with the Attorney General every two months because he is very personally involved in this, and we actually speak to each prosecutor, talking about what they have achieved at that time. At the moment our main focus is to make sure that they are part of the defined local strategies so that they are working very closely with the anti-social behaviour coordinators in each of the partnerships. Q400 Mrs Dean: Can I turn to breaches of ASBOs and latest figures from the Home Office indicate that a third of ASBOs are breached. Why is the figure so high? Mr Lewis: Actually our view of it is slightly different. If we look at all the court orders that we have across the board, having a two-thirds success rate in terms of not causing problems we would regard as being quite good. But I think it has to be said that if we are doing our job properly we are applying for orders against people whom we judge to be a serious risk of causing a problem. So we are targeting people we regard as high risk. So it is inevitable that a proportion of them will re-offend and we have always known that. We regard as a good result that two-thirds have kept out of problems. But we are targeting a difficult and problematic group and they will get into trouble. Q401 Mrs Dean: So you do not agree with several organisations who have argued that the terms of ASBOs are often inappropriate? Mr Lewis: We are getting more used to them but it is our firm guidance that for each prohibition that we seek there ought to be a clear evidence base of anti-social behaviour that justifies that prohibition, and we also want to make sure that they are really clear. We have heard in the Press and anecdotally ourselves of some conditions that seem strange, but our advice and the training that we are rolling out to everybody is that there must be clear prohibitions linked to distinct anti-social behaviour, and if we do that then I think we will be heading in the right direction. Q402 Mrs Dean: Do you think it is right that ASBOs have to last a minimum of two years? Mr Lewis: We have discussed this, particularly when we are looking for Orders in respect of young people and we are asking, say, for a curfew, and two years is rather a long period of time. However, there are a number of factors we think important. One is that on the whole we are only seeking these orders when the community has had a really difficult time and they want to see that there is a substantial order for a decent period of time, so they can have some respite from this. Also, if it is a young person and they do mend their ways then they can apply to vary the order. So we think that two years is about right, particularly so that we can say to communities, "If we have responded to your problem we have a decent order for a decent length of time." Q403 Mrs Dean: Can you tell us how often people are prosecuted for a breach of the ASBO? Mr Lewis: As the figures are showing it is about one-third of the orders lead to breaches. As you know, we have just over 3000 orders as of this summer and about one-third of those, about 1000 cases. That is over a fair period of time because we have had these orders since 1999. So about 1000 times we have had to breach these orders. Q404 Mrs Dean: 1000 are breached and in every case of a breach are people always prosecuted for that breach? Mr Lewis: Yes. We look at each case - we think this is important - on its merits and we do make sure that they have breached the order, and there may be the odd, extremely unusual case where we do not prosecute. But we take the view that the court has imposed an order, they have not done that lightly and if somebody breaches it then that is a serious matter and they ought to be back before the court. Q405 Mrs Dean: Do any of the other members have comments to make? Mr Fassenfelt: Could I make a comment about the two-year minimum period? I am a Youth Court magistrate and my view is that it is quite draconian to put a youngster on for two years minimum. Two years in a 14 year old's life has considerably more impact than on a 25-year old adult. I think that magistrates should be given the discretion to have a period much lower than that. Q406 David Winnick: Like what, for example? Mr Fassenfelt: I think we should start at six months. Ms Barnett: Could I stress that we are not saying by that that we think all two-year or longer orders are incorrect, it is purely the fact of the discretion, particularly when you are dealing with very young children in this particular case. Q407 David Winnick: Excuse me, Mrs Dean. But if they were to be less than two years do you believe that the breaching would be less, Mr Lewis? Mr Lewis: We have certainly had cases where people have asked for curfew orders for five years for a young person and that is like house arrest, it is far too long, and it is asking for somebody to be a problem. I think we have to have this basis that we should only be applying for ASBOs if it is a serious matter and there have been real concerns from a community. Therefore, if we are applying for the right orders it should be a serious matter for which you are asking and we should not be applying for these lightly. As I say, if people do reform they can ask to vary the orders, they can come back if they feel that a new leaf has been turned over and they have mended their ways. We know that there is an issue and we are alive to it, which is why we think that we should only apply for this if it is a serious matter. Q408 Mrs Dean: Ms Barnett, following that up, do you feel that magistrates would be more inclined to agree to an Anti-Social Behaviour Order for young people if they could give one for six months or 12 months rather than two years? Ms Barnett: I think there is only a very low number where they have been refused - I think something like 42 out of the other 3000. I am not sure that that would be an issue. I think it might be less soul searching in a particular case if you did not feel that you had to do it for two years and that seemed an immensely long time. If I could just add one comment, it is not only the length, it is also, as has been hinted at by Mr Lewis, the number and type of conditions, and if they are either applied for or if a Bench agrees to that and decides on them and imposes them and they are disproportionate then of course there is going to be a much higher chance of breach. So it is incredibly important that we do get it right in the first place. Mr Fox: I think we need to reinforce the fact that it is a very serious circumstance and we have to remember the people who have been affected by the behaviour in the first place. They need to feel confident that they are getting support from the criminal justice system. Two years may seem a long time; lots of other people look at that and make judgements about their own safety or, indeed, "whether I will behave like that". So I personally think that as long as we pick the serious events then two years is reasonable. Q409 Mrs Dean: Mr Clark, did you want to add anything? Councillor Clark: Two quick points. Firstly, we are keen to make sure that it is recognised that anti-social behaviour and orders are not just about young people. Secondly, that we think that the forthcoming Youth Green Paper will perhaps give an opportunity to look at this again in respect of a joined-up approach to young people. Mr Douglas: Also the point on the timing. I think in adult cases or serious cases the two years does seem about right. If somebody goes in for a custodial sentence and they get six months or three months you know that they are coming back and there is something there to protect the community and a basis to work from. The experience of acceptable behaviour contracts or agreements, however, does seem to suggest that you want to set a goal with young people and perhaps review it after three months, four months, five months and so on, and it seems to work. You set some boundaries but you have to give them a realistic timescale, and I think the point made about the two years may be a bit long maybe worth further exploration. But in serious cases - and you would expect them to be serious cases if you are going for an ASBO in a juvenile - then get it on a case by case basis. Q410 Mrs Dean: One last question, and that is related to alcohol related disorder. It is probably for Mr Fox and Mr Lewis. It has now become much rarer to prosecute drunken offences - I think about one-third compared to several years ago. Could you say why this is? Mr Lewis: I think there is greater use of the penalty provisions now than there was, and certainly some of the figures I have seen, for the traditional offences that I used to prosecute, which is drunk and disorderly and found drunk in the highway, those tend to be the offences that are now dealt with by a Fixed Penalty Notice, which are dealt with very quickly. There is a financial implication, which was usually the penalty for those offences, unless they were very unusual. So I think it is the switch to more penalty disorder notices. I do not know if Mr Fox agrees? Mr Fox: I think that is the up to date answer. I also think it was a trend before that because the number of people that were behaving in ways they should not was such that the small number of police officers could only deal with them by arrest which took them off the street for some time into the charge rooms, thereby weakening your presence on the street. So there was a spiral downwards in terms of enforcement. The Fixed Penalty seems to have turned that around in that it is a much quicker process, and particularly for the 19 to 25 age group a £40 Fixed Penalty for some of the behaviour is quite a hit, and quite quickly puts officers back on the street. So we are seeing a turnaround, but before that I think it was a spiral of, you just cannot cope. Q411 Mrs Dean: Do we need to give more publicity to the issue of Fixed Penalty fines so that that acts as a deterrent? Mr Fox: I think we are beginning to see that people are getting used to them now. The customers on the street, if you like, are used to them, and we are seeing them now featured in a lot of television documentaries, so I think it will begin to become a feature and people will know what it means. They also know now that the police officer is not going to disappear for perhaps three and a half hours and that in 15 or 20 minutes they will be back outside that club, which is quite important. Q412 Mrs Dean: Could you let us have any figures on the issue of fixed penalty tickets that you might have? Mr Fox: I do not have them in front of me but I can certainly get some. Mrs Dean: That would be helpful, Mr Winnick. Thank you. Q413 David Winnick: Mr Fox, if a police officer with so many responsibilities, particularly during the night, with hooliganism and the rest, finds someone intoxicated and he is not causing any harm except to himself, that person is not going to be arrested, is he? Mr Fox: No, but this is about people who are doing something which is affecting other people. Everything from urinating in doorways to fighting. It is usually the fighting that is an issue, or that behaviour which is vandalism or just generally unpleasant. The happy drunk has always been a happy part of the evening scene. Q414 David Winnick: But it does demonstrate why there have been far fewer prosecutions previously? Mr Fox: I think it is because of the numbers, it was just unmanageable and officers were taken away from the street for such long periods and so they chose to try to get people to move on. Q415 David Winnick: And police officers have so much more to do than arresting someone who is not causing any harm to anybody? Mr Fox: I would hope so. David Winnick: Gentlemen and Ms Barnett, thank you very much for the evidence. You will see a copy of our report in due course, but the evidence we have had from you today, as with previous witnesses, will be very useful when we start preparing our report. Thank you very much indeed. |