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A Guide to Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour

This guidance is intended to help partnerships and anti-social behaviour co-ordinators get the most out of recent legislation and fully exploit its powers to reduce anti-social behaviour. It contains guides to both ASBOs and ABCs and case studies of where the implementation of both types of intervention has been effective. It is hoped that the guidance will make clear recent changes in legislation and enable local partnerships to work together effectively in reducing anti-social behaviour. A partnership working protocol to sit alongside this guidance is being developed by the Home Office and is expected to be published in the spring.

Title: A Guide to Anti-social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour contracts
Number of pages: 86
Date published: November 2002

Anti-social behaviour has a wide legal definition – to paraphrase the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, it is behaviour which causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more people who are not in the same household as the perpetrator. Among the forms it can take are:

• graffiti – which can on its own make even the tidiest urban spaces look squalid

• abusive and intimidating language, too often directed at minorities

• excessive noise, particularly late at night

• fouling the street with litter

• drunken behaviour in the streets, and the mess it creates

• dealing drugs, with all the problems to which it gives rise.

All these are issues which concern everyone in the community. They cannot be written off as generational issues – they impact on the quality of life of young and old alike. And they require a response which puts partnership into action.

Just as the problems of anti-social behaviour are varied, the solution too must operate equally effectively on many levels. While an energetic and constructive police response is essential, it must be supplemented by engagement from a wide variety of partners. To take only the most obvious, schools need to have effective policies in place against truancy and bullying. Local authorities and registered social landlords need to take responsibility for acting against anti-social behaviour by their tenants, and against their tenants. Social services need to ensure that they are taking the welfare of the community fully into account when making their decisions. And, just as important, all of these bodies need to be sharing information with each other to the fullest possible extent in order to act fairly and decisively against the problems of anti-social behaviour.

ASBOs and ABCs can only work properly when they are based on partnership in action. As this guidance makes clear, they are powerful instruments, and they will be at their most effective when all the agencies confronted by an individual's anti-social behaviour collaborate to make the best possible use of them.

Why ASBOs and ABCs?

ASBOs and ABCs are both comparatively recent developments designed to put a stop to anti-social behaviour by the individuals on whom they are imposed. But they work in very different ways, and these differences will inform the judgement of professionals on which of them may be the best option in any particular case.

The most obvious difference is that the ASBO is a statutory creation, and carries legal force; the ABC is an informal procedure, though not without legal significance. Both types of intervention are aimed at stopping the problem behaviour, rather than punishing the offender. Because the ABC is a voluntary contract, it has greater flexibility, while the ASBO, because of its more formal status, offers advantages in terms of enforcement.

ASBOs were introduced by Section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and first used in 1999. Home Office research published in 2002 found that the orders had delivered real improvement in the quality of life to communities around the country; its use of civil law procedures and the wide powers granted to courts to impose conditions once satisfied that an ASBO was necessary were widely welcomed. But the research also made clear that these new procedures had brought new problems with them, and these problems were part of the explanation for the fact that in some parts of the country ASBOs were being very little used by practitioners.

Once identified, the Government acted quickly to address these difficulties. The Police Reform Act 2002 contains five important changes, four of which are now (November 2002) being implemented. Courts may decide that an ASBO will be valid throughout the country; it will be possible to apply for interim ASBOs; registered social landlords and the British Transport Police will be able to apply for ASBOs; and it will be possible for a court to impose an order at the same time as passing sentence for a criminal conviction. From Spring 2003 the fifth change, enabling county courts to impose orders under certain circumstances, will also be in force.

This guidance, which supersedes the guides to ASBOs produced by the Home Office in 1999 and 2000 2 , explains these changes and aims to provide all the information with practitioners are likely to need in making the most effective possible use of these orders.

Acceptable behaviour contracts are voluntary agreements made between people involved in anti-social behaviour and the local police, the housing department, the registered social landlord, or the perpetrator's school. They are flexible in terms of content and format. Initially introduced in the London Borough of Islington to deal with problems on estates being caused by young people aged between 10 and 17, they are now used with adults as well as young people, and in a wide variety of circumstances. They have proved effective as a means of encouraging young adults, children, and importantly, parents to take responsibility for unacceptable behaviour. They are being used to improve the quality of life for local people by tackling behaviour such as harassment, graffiti, criminal damage and verbal abuse.

This guidance on ASBOs and ABCs draws on the experience of police services, local authorities, youth offending teams, and other organisations. It is intended for use by practitioners – people with a professional responsibility for tackling anti-social behaviour, whether they represent local authorities, the police, youth offending teams, registered social landlords, prosecutors, the judiciary, or any other agency which seeks to tackle the problem of anti-social behaviour.

The relationship between ASBOs and ABCs

It is important that all concerned should understand that ASBOs and ABCs are in no sense competing for business. Both are potentially extremely powerful tools for dealing with cases of anti-social behaviour, and it will be very much a matter for the individual practitioner to decide which of them it might be appropriate to go for in any particular case. It is particularly important to dispel any impression that ASBOs should be regarded as a last resort, only to be tried when other interventions such as acceptable behaviour contracts have already failed.

Where an ABC is selected as the best option, it is recommended that it should contain a statement that the continuation of unacceptable behaviour may lead to an application for an ASBO. Where a contract is broken, that should be used as evidence in the application for an ASBO. It may also be possible to use the evidence of anti-social behaviour which was originally collected for the ABC in any subsequent ASBO application.

Examples of anti-social behaviour that can be tackled by ASBOs and ABCs includes:

• Harassment of residents or passers-by

• Verbal abuse

• Criminal damage

• Vandalism

• Noise nuisance

• Writing graffiti

• Engaging in threatening behaviour in large groups

• Racial abuse

• Smoking or drinking alcohol while under age

• Substance misuse

• Joyriding

• Begging

• Prostitution

• Kerb-crawling

• Throwing missiles

• Assault

• Vehicle crime.

The terms of each order or contract should be tailored to the circumstances of the individual case.

Download A Guide to Anti-social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour contracts PDF 297Kb

Last update: Thursday, August 23, 2007