ASBOs - The Last Word
In the final installment of his analysis of the likely ramifications of ASBOs, The Whole Hog concludes that the measures are likely to chiefly penalise the most vulnerable members of society.
The Whole Hog, 30 May 2005
Over the last two issues I have looked at the proposed introduction of so-called Anti-Social Behaviour orders under the Criminal Justice Bill which is soon to be presented to the Dáil. In this issue I’ll have one last cut at it before setting it free into the legislative and protest process…
The idea of ASBOs is a British one. It’s a typical New Labour measure, one that flatters to deceive. That housing and education and policing policies have created a massive failure of social consensus is swept under the carpet. The blame is firmly fixed on the dumb, the different, the halt and the lame.
It’s their own fault that they’re angry, nobody asked them to be different. Who do they think they are? If they don’t stop making a nuisance of themselves, we’ll slap an order on them and that’ll do the trick…
A recent paper by the Coalition Against ASBOs quotes a 2005 report from the World Health Organisation. The WHO argues that the high level of people in prisons with mental health problems is a by-product of a number of factors amongst which is ‘implementation of laws criminalising nuisance behaviour’ and also ‘an intolerance in society of difficult or disturbing behaviour’.
Now, you may be different from me but I admit this: I have been a public nuisance now and then. I remember being arrested for possessing an allegedly stolen beer mug in Wood Green in London. I have urinated in a public place. I have whooped and hollered in the streets. Me and my mates were real bad eggs…
Know what I mean? ASBOs equate that nonsense with harassing old people and ethnic minorities. In the world of ASBOs, a person who relieves himself in a laneway when he can’t quite make it home is placed on a par with a vicious thug who intimidates pensioners or asylum seekers.
And experience in the UK is that these orders are as likely to be applied to people with mental disabilities as to out-of-control young thugs.
Furthermore, and this is crucial, in the UK nearly all ASBOs have related to conduct that could have been prosecuted under criminal law.
As Andrew Ashworth of the University of Oxford points out, the effect of ASBOs has been to turn the criminal law upside down in that ‘people are being sent to prison for committing a non-criminal act such as entering a part of town when banned…’
Just think about it. Other restrictions include not meeting certain people, not playing loud music and not being in certain venues. Some have been banned from being near their own homes.
The Coalition Government assures us that this won’t happen in Ireland, but then they would, wouldn’t they? The same promise was also made in the UK but the ASBOs escaped into the wild and took on a life of their own.
Don’t believe any promises. The same will happen here. And the tabloids will be out there salivating for the first ASBO so they can try to stick the recipient’s photo on their front page. This will be despite the regulation in the Children Act prohibiting exactly that.
The ASBO is a legislated version of the medieval stocks and the modern punishment beating. And that’s exactly what it’s meant to be. Ostensibly it’s there to protect innocent people from thugs and vandals. But if the existing criminal law didn’t do that, how will the new measures do it?
I have read the Children Act 2001 in some depth. Having done so I’ll guarantee you this: no competent professional who has read that Act could argue for ASBOs. That applies to the Minister for Justice just like anyone else.
I am not saying that McDowell is not a competent professional barrister. Far from it. Until appointed to the Government he was near the top of the food chain in the Law Library.
But once appointed to political office, one’s profession is overriden by one’s political position. McDowell, I suspect, knows what’s wrong. He knows that the law is perfectly sufficient to deal with any problems out there. What’s wrong is its implementation. Our insane housing policy has dispersed populations in all directions and police deployment has not kept pace.
The problem, in other words, isn’t the behaviour of louts. The law is there to deal with that. The problem is that the cops just can’t do the job.
Many people say that McDowell is actually a nice bloke and an engaging dinner companion. I have no idea. Stranger things have happened. Nice or not, there’s no doubt that he’s intelligent and unafraid of hard decisions. That being so, it’s a pity that he’s taking such an intellectually lazy and politically opportunistic option and one that will, in its effect on legal process, reflect poorly on his time as Minister for Justice.
But there’s the rub. The intelligent and engaging person that some see in McDowell is the same person as the legal professional. He’s been overridden by the politician and all politicians are opportunists and short-termists. We have grown weary and suspicious of politicians of all hues. This cynical manoeuvring just reminds us of why…
Well, sooner or later there’s a vote coming. There’ll be a time for payback. In the meantime, just store this up.
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