As Michael McDowell prepares to bring in the controversial orders, Kitty Holland reports from Manchester, the Asbo capital of the world
The 20-year-old man sitting on the bench in Court 5 is shaking his head. "But I'll end up in prison. I know I will. I can't do this." Deputy District Judge Ross has just told Paul McLoughlin he will be granting an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Asbo) against him.
"I am granting this anti-social order because I believe it is necessary to protect the people of Manchester," says Judge Ross at Manchester Magistrates' Court. "You are obviously engaged in the behaviour outlined by the [ Manchester city] council. Now if you breach it you will be brought before the Crown court and could be sent to prison for five years."
Among the conditions on the Asbo being made against McLoughlin is that he does not go to an estate in the Withington area of south Manchester where he had been stealing cars, driving without insurance and using drugs.
"But all my family live there," exclaims McLoughlin. "My kids live there." Judge Ross tells him firmly he can enter the area, but only via a defined route, on foot, and he may not remain in the area overnight. "I'm giving you leeway and expect you to behave yourself."
A similar scenario could soon be played out in Ireland, when Asbos are introduced here later this year, as the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell has promised. McDowell said they had "worked well in Britain" and would be included in the forthcoming Criminal Justice Act. The day after his intentions were reported in this newspaper the Irish Coalition Against Asbos was formed. Included among its members are the Children's Rights Alliance, Barnardos and the National Youth Council, which have all voiced concern about the Asbos.
The political popularity of the Asbo, however, is proving irresistible and most of the Irish political parties have thrown their weight behind them.
Billy Kelleher, Fianna Fáil TD in Cork who travelled to Leicester this week to examine how Asbos work and to report back to Brian Lenihan, Minister of State with responsibility for children, has said he sees a place for Asbos, but only with ancillary supports for those who receive them.
They will undoubtedly also prove popular among some people in the mainly poorer communities worst affected by anti-social behaviour.
Meanwhile, back in Manchester, about four miles from the Magistrates' Court where Paul McLoughlin had appeared earlier in the day, a group of young people are kicking a ball against a low garden wall in the Nell Lane housing estate in Chorlton.
The first young people approached by this reporter in the estate are happy to talk to The Irish Times about Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. The 14-year-old looks up. "You can talk to me. I got one last week."
The slightly overweight boy, with black hair, sallow skin and dark eyes gives his name as James, but doesn't want his surname used. James explains he has had a number of warning letters, and that his mother has had a meeting with officials from Manchester City Council about his behaviour.
"They said I'd been smashing up BT [ telephone] boxes and throwing things through windows," he shrugs, still kicking the ball against the wall. "I might have the odd time but not as much as they was saying. They said someone got a camera with me doing it. They said I was vandalising and spray painting and that."
He's not allowed on certain roads in the estate, "And I'm not allowed hang about with him," he says, gesturing towards the older of his two friends.
"So, you are breaching the order right now?" he is asked. "Yeah, but he's my friend. A friend's a friend. You can't stop hanging out with your mates."
Asked whether he's worried this could mean he'll be back before the courts and would face criminal proceedings, he shakes his head. "No, everyone breaches them." His mum - a single parent - "went mad" when he got the first warning letter, "but she don't say nothing now".
Although pleasantly laid out in small cul-de-sacs and leafy lanes, the estate, four miles south of Manchester's city-centre, is clearly populated by low-income families. At 6pm some houses have cars parked outside, but most do not. Women are briskly pushing buggies while young people sit against walls dressed in tracksuits and hoody tops. Other young people speed about on pushbikes, similarly dressed. Common green areas are well maintained, although the windows of particular houses are filthy and the small patches of green in front of some are strewn with rubbish.
This area, neighbouring Withington, Moston and nearby Moss Side, are where a high proportion of Asbos have been sought and granted. They were hailed as the answer to anti-social elements "terrorising" housing estates by then British home secretary Jack Straw when he introduced them in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act.
An Asbo, which is a civil order, can be granted against anyone over the age of 10 for behaviour causing "harassment, alarm or distress". The behaviour might include playing loud music, the use of bad language, making graffiti, or engaging in vandalism.
The order can be applied for by a local authority, a private landlord or housing association, in conjunction with the police.
The vast majority (97 per cent) are granted and have a wide range of conditions attached to them, such as that the person must stay out of certain areas or refrain from hanging around with named individuals.
Some local authorities have printed posters and leaflets with young people's pictures on them, inviting members of the public who see them breaching their Asbos to inform the local authority.
Given that Asbos are civil matters, the British media have been able to print photographs of young people who are the subject of them.
Irish media law expert David Phelan says this could happen here too if similar civil orders are introduced, as media are banned from publishing the names and images of children only if they are subject to criminal proceedings.
Although Asbos in Britain can be granted on the basis of hearsay and often anonymous evidence, breach of them is a criminal offence. A person who breaches an Asbo may be arrested and brought before the criminal courts to face imprisonment of up to five years.
A KEY CONCERN OF those against Asbos is this effective criminalisation of non-criminal behaviour. "The Asbo is clearly, therefore, moving offenders up tariff [ from a civil offence to a criminal one] and resulting in the inappropriate use of custody," says a spokesman for Britain's National Association of Probation Officers (Napo). "Asbos are being used against young people whose behaviour may be anti-social but not necessarily threatening." And they are primarily being used against disadvantaged young people living in areas with few facilities, the spokesman adds.
Matt Foot, a London-based criminal defence lawyer who spoke at a meeting of the newly formed Coalition Against Asbos in Dublin this week, founded Asbo Concern in Britain last month. Among those in this lobby group are charities, trade unions and civil liberties groups, including the British Association of Social Workers, Napo, the Howard League for Penal Reform, the justice charity, Inquest, and the civil rights organisation, Liberty.
According to Asbo Concern, these orders do nothing to solve the problem behaviour because they simply ban it; there are huge variations in the way they are being used; some local authorities appear to be using Asbos to clear sink estates of problematic families and individuals and they allow local authorities to avoid dealing with wider social and environmental problems. Proof of their failure, says Foot, can be seen in the fact that more than 40 per cent are breached. Panic about anti-social behaviour is being fomented for political gain, he argues.
Asbos represent "the triumph of heresay and hysteria", he adds, and their enormous popularity among politicians is effectively a policy of "imprisonment for votes".
Even the British home office-appointed Youth Justice Board has raised concerns about the long-term impact of Asbos on the young people receiving them.
Although slowly used at first - just 104 were granted in the first eight months of 1999 - there has been a significant escalation. More than 2,600 were granted since the beginning of last year. According to the British Home Office, 42 per cent of Asbos are breached and about 50 per cent of those who breach them end up in prison.
With 851 granted in Manchester since 1999, more have been granted in the city than anywhere else in Britain, making it in the words of one anti-Asbo campaigner, "the Asbo capital of the world".
Manchester City Council had already been actively using housing injunctions against "anti-social tenants". Given its success with these in flushing out drug-dealing and "anti-social" neighbours, the council lobbied for the introduction of the Anti-Social Behaviour Order in the 1998 Act.
"So we were very eager to start using them," explains Bill Pitt, former head of the Nuisance Strategy Group in Manchester Local Authority. Now working directly for the British home office as an expert practitioner on its national anti-social behaviour strategy, the Together campaign, Pitt travels Britain advising local authorities on how to make full use of Asbos.
WHILE, AS IN Ireland, crime figures have been falling over the past number of years, people's fear of crime has increased. This Pitt attributes to anti-social behaviour. Although he agrees with the anti-Asbo lobby that anti-social behaviour has not itself increased, he says: "People's belief and expectation that agencies can and should do something about it has increased.
"Asbos set a credible standard of acceptable behaviour for people, they protect communities and give people engaged in anti-social behaviour an opportunity to reintegrate into their communities," he told The Irish Times this week. "They are socially inclusive."
He points to the experience of people such as Yvonne Todd, a resident and community worker in Leicester in the east Midlands. She was one of three residents in the Eyers Monsell estate who acted as a witness in the cases of three teenagers - aged 15, 16 and 17 - who had Asbos made against them last autumn. The three had been the ring-leaders of a gang of about 16 youths that had been throwing bricks through windows, harassing elderly people, blocking people's entrance to shops. The local hairdresser had to close two days a week, says Todd, "to go mobile because so many of her customers wouldn't come down to the shops here".
The three youths were banned from the shops in the estate as a result of Asbos. Two have since moved away, although one has ended up in custody because he breached his Asbo.
Todd has nothing but good to say about Asbos. "Well, we have won," she says, smiling. "And we are chuffed and we'll keep on winning. A community cannot feel strong if it can't feel protected."
In contrast to the Manchester experience, just 21 Asbos have been granted in Leicester since 1999. Neil Canham, head of the anti-social behaviour unit in Leicester City Council describes Asbos as "the nuclear option". Other options should be explored with the offender and the community before this option is sought.
He's a former police officer, and his focus is unapologetically law-and-order centred, making proud proclamations, such as: "We have swept up everything from the graffiti-painting yob to the family from hell, to racist abuse."
He does point to the social supports that he says should run hand-in-hand with Asbos, explaining that since the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 any judge granting an Asbo is required to consider making an Individual Support Order (ISO) or Parenting Order (PO).
These are intended to involve truancy officers, social workers and the like in helping the young person to stop the behaviour that led to the Asbo. The judge must, however, have a case report on the young person from the Youth Offending Team of the local authority to make such orders.
"It never happens though," says Canham shaking his head. He attributes this to lack of staff in the relevant sections of the local authority. Pitt too refers to this with some dismay, but is adamant deep-rooted social ills are not his concern.
"The purpose of an Asbo is not rehabilitative. It is to protect the communities. That is the nature of these orders.
"It's about handing communities back to people. People may talk about these young offenders' rights but I am talking about the rights of the children who want to be able to play on their bikes without being beaten up or intimidated."
It is this almost total absence of ancillary supports that are at the root of people's concerns about Asbos in Britain. Andrew Keogh, a youth criminal defence solicitor in Manchester who now makes most of his money defending young people threatened with Asbos, says he is "absolutely shocked" that Pitt "is taking pride in saying his concern is just with the community".
"While I can see the sentiment behind it, I think it is an admission of failure, a damning indictment, if the council is giving up on these children. And we are dealing with children."
While in principle he feels Asbos could be "quite useful" if they identified vulnerable young people and those young people were "swooped on with services", he says in fact these young people are "swooped on with punishment - in draconian terms they cannot live up to - and with no help whatsoever offered".
"We are talking about young people who are second and third generation of families disenfranchised from all the things we take for granted - schooling, familial support, stable relationships, literacy, job security.
"These are children who have been failed by the system from the minute they were born.
"I am not saying they are angels by any means. Most of them are pretty menacing pieces of work, but radical intervention was needed in their lives a long time ago. I get their files in here and find they have spent on average 10 days a year at primary school."
Asbos, Keogh says, do not work and instead push the anti-social behaviour to the adjoining areas.
"They might give the community respite for a few weeks, but they are not a long-term solution. What is needed of course is much more radical, much more expensive and is not going to give that immediate political pay-back. And that is long-term investment in these communities and as I say, radical intervention in these kids' lives a lot earlier."
Such investment is unlikely to be forthcoming for those such as Paul, who spoke to The Irish Times as he emerged, on crutches, from Court 5 in Manchester Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.
"I went to Barlow High and the teachers never gave me any help because they said there was no point. I never done no exams and left school when I was 14. I was an altar-boy me. Me Nana in Ireland thought I'd be a priest," he smiles. "But I started hanging round with the wrong lot I suppose. I used to drink a lot and I'm still a bit drug dependent.
"I'm homeless sort of thing now. I had a council house in Moss Side but when I got locked up for driving without insurance they banned me off the housing list. And now I'm not allowed see me kids." Asked whether he was ever offered any guidance or support, he looks up quizzically.
"On how to sort me life out sort of thing? No, never. And I can't ask my Mam and Dad for help all the time. It's hopeless."