ASBOs a shambles?

Jock — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:31:24 +0000

Back in April I wrote a piece about a particular Anti-Social Behaviour Order handed down to a chap from Blackbird Leys in Oxford that banned him from his family home for the rest of his life. I was particularly concerned about the draconian nature of the punishment - a modern day banishment redolent of some Shakespearian mediaeval Italian city state run by a tin-pot tyrant.

Now today the Oxford Mail reports that this particular ASBO has been quashed by a judge on appeal, who said that the evidence presented was little more than local "tittle-tattle" and did not stand up to scrutiny. Indeed it appears that one of the complaints against him was actually made about a period when the guy was already inside - one of the best of alibis in my understanding.

Now again, I want to make clear that I don't know the ins and outs of the case or the individuals concerned. Merely from the fact that this chap has had 20 years worth of prison sentences in the same period suggests he is a thorough nuisance. Originally I wanted to know why, if we ever believed that prison was there to rehabilitate, we needed an additional sanction to banish as well on a non-criminal rap - instead of keeping him inside until the authorities felt he was rehabilitated or was well on the way to being so. Then, one would have thought, he could settle back in the community he came from, even the one he offended against, and people would have a whole new experience of him.

But now, it seems that the ASBO system, apart from compounding criminal sanctions with sentences essentially even more severe (banishment from your home area where your family has been settled for decades) can be based on little evidence, evidence in particular that does not stand up to scrutiny by the legal system itself. How many more victims are there of this politicising of the justice system - where parties can go into an election claiming to be willing to bang up as many people as it takes to get your neighbourhood how you want it? I certainly know of Labour councillors who recognize that some of the ASBOs given to young tearaways on their estates were not the right way of dealing with them or their undoubted problems.

Time for a new look at ASBOs - at both the terms (banishment for life I find unlikely to ever be "proportionate") that can be handed down and at the way evidence is collected and how objectively that is viewed (how complaints about someone while they are already in prison could possibly have been entertained by even the least awake magistrate beggars belief).

The irony in this case is that this chap is currently on remand, enjoying a further stay at Her Majesty's expense - accused of breaching this ASBO that the law says should never have been issued in the first place. I hope he's home by this afternoon - though with misgivings for those who feel, rightly or wrongly, that he is a blight on their lives.

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ASBOs a shambles?