Crime and anti-social behaviour

New Labour’s policies can’t end …

Crime and anti-social behaviour

TONY BLAIR’S well-publicised ideas on "respect" in the community have
pushed his views on crime and anti-social behaviour onto the political
agenda again. Education worker MIKE FORSTER asks what attitude should
socialists take on this issue?

IMMEDIATELY AFTER last year’s general election, Tony Blair announced
that his most immediate priority would be tackling anti-social
behaviour. He claimed to have been struck on the doorstep by people’s
general concern that ‘respect’ was fast disappearing from the streets of
Britain.

In reality, government statistics show that over the last year crime
actually fell, with individual recorded crimes falling from 5.9 million
to 5.5 million. However, violent and sexual crimes increased by 2.6%,
although they don’t appear to be on the government’s list of priorities.

The most likely victims of crime are aged between 18 and 25 and are
black. The least likely victims are those from the 50-75 year old age
profile, though statistics like these don’t reflect the strong and
genuine fear of crime that exists in this section of society as well as
others.

Looking back even further, crime remained relatively static from when
statistics were first comprehensively collected in the 1820s, to the
1950s. There was a slight increase from the 1950s to the 1970s, but the
1980s saw a dramatic increase of over 700%.

This period coincided with Thatcher’s government: the destruction of
manufacturing jobs, a huge rise in unemployment, the collapse of social
cohesion and the beginning of the dismantling of the welfare state. This
led to many of the social consequences which 21st century Britain now
struggles to deal with: family breakdown, drug and alcohol abuse, rising
disparity between rich and poor.

A recent study conducted in New Zealand found what socialists have
always known, that you’re three times more likely to be involved in
crime if you live in an area of social disadvantage. The biggest factors
likely to trigger criminal activity were prolonged economic deprivation,
family stress, school exclusion or disaffection and drug or alcohol
abuse.

Of course criminal activity carried out by the capitalist class
continues unpunished – the theft of pension funds, the destruction and
theft of manufacturing jobs, the withdrawal of welfare benefits from the
most needy, the ‘illegal’ invasion of Iraq.

We live in a class society with blatant class laws put in place to
defend the capitalist system. Under such a society, we cannot expect the
rich or big business to be brought to book for crimes they commit
against the working class every day of our working lives.

Following the increase in crime in the 1980s, it started levelling
out in the1990s and has been relatively static for the last 10 years.
This did not stop New Labour’s crusade against anti-social behaviour
which began in 1998 when David Blunkett was Home Secretary. Initially he
announced that the government was going to tackle ‘families from hell’
who, it was claimed, were terrorising estates.

Criminalising measures

ARISING OUT of the Crime and Disorder Act, a massive new panoply of
orders were introduced that the courts can impose on civil offenders:
Acceptable Behaviour Contracts; Referral Orders; Action Plan Orders;
Reparation Orders; Parenting Orders; Fixed Penalty Notices; and
Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). Breaching any of these will result
in imprisonment.

The government has tried to define what constitutes anti-social
behaviour. It initially included being noisy or rude in public places,
behaviour likely to lead to neighbour complaint, carrying some form of
weapon, racial harassment, joyriding and graffiti.

They later added speeding traffic, dog mess, sleeping rough,
inconvenient parking and teenagers hanging around. When challenged about
this definition, Blunkett’s deputy minister suggested that anti-social
behaviour "was whatever the victim thinks it means". ‘Hoodies’ – young
people wearing hoods, have been banned in several town centres and most
schools have banned wearing hoods on school premises.

However, this gimmick has been superseded by a raft of proposals,
including bringing in a 24,000-strong army of community support officers
to conduct truancy sweeps, setting up an Anti-Yob Direct Hotline where
callers can ‘dob in a yob’, empowering councils to evict occupants from
‘properties from hell’ and requiring certain families to go on
compulsory rehabilitation programmes on money management, anger control
and parenting.

There will be cash incentives for teenage parents to attend parenting
classes and a further £20 million will be provided for parent school
advisers to help families make the ‘right’ choice for their children’s
education.

These measures are going down a predictable route this government has
already started to tread. They also include giving teachers more power
to restrain pupils in order to ‘restore discipline’ in schools and
giving councils more powers to impose fines and custodial sentences to
improve school attendance.

Since ASBOs were introduced their range and purpose have dramatically
shifted from families towards almost exclusively being focussed on young
people. Three-quarters of orders so far imposed have been against people
under 21, 47% of them under 17. Roughly half have been breached, by
supposedly failing to abide by the conditions imposed in the ASBO, and
in those cases, 75% of the people concerned have been sent to jail!

Socialists could never be in favour of people going around smashing
windows or riding motor bikes on pavements, but ASBOs are criminalising
young people and their behaviour by using criminal law, rather than
existing civil legislation which carries far different consequences.

For example, by failing to abide by the conditions of your ASBO, you
can be returned to the magistrates’ court, found guilty and sent to
jail, not for the original offence, but for not complying with the ASBO!
More recently, parents have been sent to jail for failing to pay fixed
penalty notices because their children weren’t going to school.

Civil rights groups complain bitterly about the inappropriate use of
ASBOs which have criminalised a whole new layer of young people. Even
the former head of the family justice system, Dame Elizabeth Butler
Sloss warned that Britain must act to stop child offenders hardening
into life-long criminals or risk a legacy of "totally unmanageable
juvenile crime."

She argues forcefully that too many child offenders are prosecuted
and put on the path to a life of crime. Instead, she says that young
offenders up to the age of 14 committing moderate anti-social crime
should be dealt with by the care system rather than the courts.

And little wonder. Prisons are now full to over-capacity. From an
average of two to a cell, the prison population has swollen to six per
cell. The HM Inspectorate of Prisons admits that racial harassment and
bullying are rife. Youth numbers in jail have never been higher, along
with an alarming rise in prison suicides.

The Audit Commission and Chief Inspector of Prisons both say that
"something should be done" about the overwhelming number of young people
in prison. The government is ‘doing something’ – criminalising even more
young people!

Ignoring the causes

SOCIALISTS, WHILE recognising the genuine and legitimate fear of
crime that exists, have to move away from the government’s agenda of
using crime to create a greater climate of fear, and must consider
exactly what’s taking place and how an alternative can be found.

The government’s claim of spending more on young people is far from
the truth. They’re appointing armies of new workers whose role in life
is to police all these orders imposed by the courts. They are all being
directed to move from care and reparation towards punishment and
enforcement!

In case they don’t get the message, Home Secretary Charles Clarke has
ordered the Probation Service to be served up lock, stock and barrel for
privatisation. The biggest likely provider of rehabilitation for
offenders leaving prison could be the private company Group Four if
these measures are approved – so much for care in the community!

Under existing ASBO legislation, the right to a fair trial has been
removed. Many organisations can apply for ASBOs, such as tenants
associations, community groups, parent teacher associations, housing
officers, landlords and parish councils. Head teachers have been
recently added.

Only one in a hundred ASBO applications is turned down by the courts.
Little wonder – these are the only hearings in Britain which allow the
admissibility of hearsay evidence and where no standard of proof is
required to produce a finding of guilt.

The Commissioner for the Council of European Human Rights, Gil
Robles, says the UK is suffering from ASBO-mania and is introducing
control orders which constitute punishment without trial. ASBOs are
being introduced for bizarre reasons, such as forbidding: owning a box
of matches, using a mop and bucket, wearing a baseball cap, owning a TV
stereo or radio and being drunk over the next five years.

In Hull, anyone found loitering in Queen’s Gardens (a public park
just outside the technical college) can be arrested since the whole area
has had an ASBO imposed on it!

In reality all these measures blatantly ignore the real causes of
crime and so-called anti-social behaviour. This government’s policies
are perpetuating a system which will let more working-class people fall
into the poverty trap and so be more likely also to be tempted into
criminal activity that adversely affects other people.

The NHS is being broken up and privatised, benefits are being clawed
back from the most needy and the closing off of higher and further
education to working-class young people denies them opportunities.

So-called foundation schools will inevitably want to exclude more
challenging or needy pupils, especially if they have control over
admissions policy; private-sector housing is on the march and councils
are selling off their housing stock. The scandal of low pay continues to
blight British jobs and is spreading like an ink spot, especially across
the most unorganised workplaces.

Danger sign

ECONOMIC AND social deprivation follows in the wake of these
appalling policies and so we will see a corresponding increase in crime.
The government’s response has been solely to strengthen the punishment
and enforcement arms of the criminal justice system.

However, an alternative form of society is necessary if we are to
begin to address the problem of crime; the building of a socialist
society in which deprivation, poverty and alienation could be tackled. A
society which can meet the needs of all its members will, over time, by
the elimination of poverty, be able to dramatically reduce crime.

In the shorter term, we need to put forward positive ideas about how
socialists might want to see crime tackled in opposition to Blair’s
proposals. A full programme of investment in public services would go a
long way to restore confidence in the welfare state and reverse the
government’s privatisation programme.

In the field of criminal justice, certain limited projects clearly
have had a lot more success in preventing offenders from re-offending,
such as community projects, restorative justice, investment in more
youth facilities, developing alternative education curricula and genuine
welfare programmes. Youth and community workers should be allowed where
possible to move away from the destructive environment of enforcement
towards care and reparation.

The danger signs are there if this government carries down its path
of enforced ‘respect’. The explosion of anger on the streets of France
reflected a mood of rage, despair and frustration. Where communities
don’t find an organised, constructive expression to these feelings, they
all too often turn in on themselves.

The blind alley of rioting does not offer a way out. It is the task
of socialists to argue for and offer an alternative which will harness
these energies in building a socialist society.