Anti-Social Behaviour
Sustainable solutions to Anti-Social Behaviour
In this briefing the Local Government Association (LGA) expands its earlier response to the government's approach to anti-social behaviour (ASB), and provides examples of ways in which local government is tackling ASB of all types.
Title: Sustainable solutions to Anti-Social Behaviour
Author: Local Government Association
Date published: November 2004
Number of pages: 27
The LGA believes the most effective and sustainable solutions to tackling anti-social behaviour require a focus on prevention, enforcement and rehabilitation and that local authorities are a key to co-ordinating the work of a variety of local agencies.
Recent legislation and initiatives to tackle ASB
The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act
This act created anti-social behaviour orders to modify the behaviour of individuals who behave 'in a manner that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household'. Recent figures show that there have been 2455 such orders since they were introduced on 1 April 1999 to the period ending 31 March 2004.
Respect and Responsibility white paper
The white paper proposed a range of measures to build upon recent legislation since 1998. It states that to tackle anti-social behaviour we must ensure that:
everyone takes responsibility for their own actions and behaves in a way that does not harass or intimidate others
intervention and support is provided to parents and children where their dysfunctional behaviour is ruining other people's lives
there are clear standards of behaviour, which the police, local authorities and others must enforce swiftly and effectively when breached
the perpetrators of anti-social behaviour are held accountable for their actions. We owe a duty to the victims of ASB to ensure that they know the perpetrators have been brought to justice.
This white paper resulted in the new Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003.
Sustainable solutions
The projects and initiatives described below illustrate the range of work councils are involved in, in order to tackle the triggers and causes of crime and anti-social behaviour (ASB), and also to rehabilitate offenders. The full report also includes case studies.
Serving children well
Local leaders from all agencies should focus on improving local well being for everyone. This will help to address the causes of crime and ASB (e.g. poverty, poor housing and homelessness, unemployment, barriers to participation in leisure and sports, education and discrimination).
The LGA, Association of Directors of Social Services, and the NHS Confederation have developed 'Serving Children Well', which provides a multi-agency model for co-ordinating preventative work on the ground and delivering effective support to children and families.
For this to work, it is essential that a unified workforce for children is developed with shared outcomes, joint accountabilities and access to training and development. It is also essential that children and their families have their say in developing the services that affect them.
Education
How can education help?
Education needs to be of high quality, inspiring, engaging and relevant from an early age. This will have a huge impact on improving the life chances of children and young people.
Schools can help those already caught up in the criminal justice system rather than giving up on them, by developing a more flexible curriculum.
Schools also have a role in supporting other aspects of the emotional, social and physical well being of children, by building strong partnerships with parents and carers.
Youth crime services
Youth crime services have seen marked successes in the development of new initiatives to tackle offending behaviour. The processes have become quicker, community sentencing is more flexible and effective, and restorative justice is leading young offenders to face the consequences, as well as the causes, of their offending.
Youth offender panels, where the young offender meets the victim, and parenting programmes have been successful in many areas.
New Deal programmes
The new deal programmes involve community-based training opportunities and specifically set out to recruit those young people that are finding it difficult to find jobs. Theses people may have few or no qualifications, no work experience, criminal records, low aspirations or are second generation unemployed.
Community enterprises
Community enterprises are community-based businesses with social goals. They are started often to meet a specific community regeneration need and can vary widely in scope of their scale, focus and geographic context. Their main aim is to achieve long term financial sustainability.
Community enterprises such as development trusts tend to emerge in neighbourhoods that have experienced a fall in the strength of their local economy. The areas tend to lack facilities through lack of investment from the private sector.
Supporting ex-offenders
Evidence provided by the Social Exclusion Unit shows that providing ex-prisoners with stable environments once they have been released helps to reduce the risk of them offending again.
Agencies therefore need to work with offenders while they are still serving their sentences, prior to their release to ensure adequate support with housing and other personal needs are provided. This will involve dealing with housing benefit payments and tenancy management.
Leisure activities
Providing young people with plenty of things to do and, more importantly, with activities that they want to do will help keep them from engaging in nuisance behaviour. Local residents put this high on their list of priorities. Young offenders have also said that boredom was a main reason why they took part in anti-social behaviour.
Participating in cultural and sports activities can provide the less academically minded young person with opportunities for success and self-fulfillment that simply do not exist for them elsewhere.
Drug programmes
The development of drug programmes is vital for tackling drugs, which is a key trigger of anti-social behaviour
Helping families
A number of local authorities are involved in the provision of parenting development and other support to the parents of vulnerable young children, building on the fact that many of them come into contact with the council in a variety of ways.
Physical environment
Streets, shop fronts, walls, fences, or railway bridges that are covered with graffiti, areas strewn with litter and abandoned furniture or that are dirty, give the impression that a place is un-cared for, neglected and far from the minds of officials or authorities. They also give a message that somehow it is acceptable to behave badly in such areas because nobody is going to care.
The development of local initiatives and strategies to provide clean and attractive environments, where people feel safe, is therefore vital. Clean environments are less likely to suffer environmental damage and anti-social behaviour.
The 'broken window' theory has shown that neglect attracts abuse. If graffiti and litter is dealt with quickly, broken windows repaired straight away, there is less likely to be more of the same.
Last update: Friday, August 29, 2008