On 16th May CentreForum held a seminar in the House of Commons involving four leading thinkers on the subject.

• Rt Hon Frank Field MP,  author of "Neighbours from Hell: The Politics of Behaviour"
• Nick Clegg MP, Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary
• Mary Riddell, The Observer
• Matt Foot,  criminal defence solicitor and coordinator of ASBO Concern

Rt Hon Frank Field MP

Mr Field started by saying he was at least relieved to see that liberals were finally recognising that anti-social behaviour is a curse, and that something must be done about it. Till now, he said, the attitude of many liberals towards anti-social behaviour has been to pretend it was merely a moral panic dreamt up by politicians and the media. He wanted to use the event to challenge the liberal consensus on yob culture.

To illustrate the scale of the problem we are facing, Mr Field used the example of his constituency of Birkenhead where, in the last year alone, there were more violent crimes than in the whole country in a single year  a century  ago.

Families no longer know how to raise their young in some cases.

Mr Field issued a note of warning over the Government’s approach to tackling crime. Trouble breeds trouble and the Government must be tough to stop things getting out of hand.

He summed up by returning to the two themes of family and ideological breakdown. We must ‘cut the supply routes’ to anti-social behaviour. People are giving up on Britain; over a million Britons have now escaped to Spain.

Schools and parents must teach children better social and parenting skills. Education should have more of a focus on bringing up well-raised children. Literature can teach us about different forms of parenting and science can be used to compare us to other species, and the amount of care and effort they put into nurturing their young.

For the Victorians, the major ideological challenge was how to develop a society with both freedom and order. The answer they came up with was the notion of citizenship. For us today, the major challenge is to define this notion of citizenship and to develop a society whereby there are accepted norms of decent conduct, and that  these are enforced.

Nick Clegg MP

Mr Clegg started out by saying he would contest the notion that liberalism falters when dealing with the realities of crime, and that liberals are simply not tough or pragmatic enough to deal with the blight of anti-social behaviour.

Since 1997, there has been a bidding war between Tony Blair and the Daily Mail over crime. The rhetoric is continually ratcheted up. More and more people are excluded from society in our overcrowded prison system every year. In this atmosphere, politicians are judged on their ‘toughness’ by their attitudes to measures like ASBOs.

Mr Clegg argued that liberalism is an alternative to this prevailing wisdom, and it is not just an alternative in spirit: it works better.
In the case of many of the successful crime reduction exercises, the results were actually achieved by communities working together to tackle bad behaviour. Mr Clegg cited the examples of Sighthill Library in Edinburgh, where local children were involved in working with the library rather than behaving anti-socially outside it.

Communities should handle crime, and not just leave it to the ‘heavy hand of the state’. The big challenge for the Liberal Democrats  is to show that liberalism works on crime. With escalating prison rates, and incredibly high rates of re-offending, the current system is highly visible but unworkable. Mr Clegg believed there is a liberal alternative.

Mary Riddell

Ms Riddell began by recognising that there are problems of anti-social behaviour in Britain, and that these problems are worse for poorer people. Middle class anti-social behaviour is more likely to go unpunished than the same behaviour in a poorer area.

Ms Riddell was opposed to the view, expressed by Frank Field, that communities are dying, parents are neglectful and young people are becoming more brutal. She felt these views were caused by a hefty dose of nostalgia for an English golden age of village greens, old maids and studious children.

The demonisation of young people and ratcheting up of fear has been deeply harmful. If politicians and the media tell people that they can barely walk down the street without running a gamut of foreign rapists, then people will believe them. We have allowed ourselves to be duped into thinking that we live in a time of unique unrest.

Mr Riddell argued that we need to focus more on positive, rather than punitive, solutions to yob culture as a response to the social exclusion of many young people.

She pointed out that old institutions such as youth clubs, scouts and brownies were good for young people and haven’t been effectively replaced. Boredom is a big issue for today’s children, especially those in small towns and rural areas.

She finished by saying that  punitive solutions to anti-social behaviour should be reined back. In some cases, we are making those with  the capacity to be good citizens  irredeemable.

Matt Foot

He opened by saying the whole way we approach the subject should be reversed. Rather than looking for a liberal approach to yob culture, we should be worried about the legislative attack on youth culture.

Mr Foot pointed out that the British Crime Survey consistently showed a drop in crime each year, and yet the Government continues to put out scare stories about crime and, in particular, youth crime. One example he cited was a Home Office report last year that stated that one in four children was a yob. This was ridiculous, as it turned out these ‘yobs’ included children involved in relatively minor incidents such as school-fights, stealing sweets etc.

He argued that ASBOs have been introduced with far too broad a definition. “Likely to cause alarm” could mean all sorts of things, especially when someone’s intention, or otherwise, is not even taken into account.

Mr Foot provided several examples of inappropriate ASBOs, including some issued to children with physical and mental disabilities.

With the breach rate currently 42% and rising, Mr Foot said that not only were ASBOs unfair, but they were unnecessary. Anti-social behaviour does exist, and does cause misery, but most of this behaviour – vandalism, assault etc – is already criminal. Rather than create new laws, the current ones simply need to be applied.

He finished by pointing out the unpopularity of ASBOs as a response to anti-social behaviour. According to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2/3rds of people believe in prevention over punishment as a response to crime, and the example of Camden Borough, Britain’s ASBO centre, where Labour recently lost control of the council, shows the unpopularity of the measures.