Nipping Crime in the Bud? The Use of Antisocial Behaviour Interventions with Young People in England and Wales

Abstract

This article presents findings from a study of the use of anti-social behaviour (ASB) warning letters, Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs) and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) with 3,481 young people from four large metropolitan areas in England which challenge dominant narratives about their use and impact. The findings unsettle prevailing beliefs concerning the targeted use of ASB interventions to tackle low-level incivilities and the timing of their use within a young person's deviant trajectory. They also contest the logical sequencing of behaviour regulation strategies by demonstrating the haphazard deployment of ASB sanctions within complex webs of prevention, ASB and youth justice interventions. The article concludes by considering the findings alongside recent youth justice trends in England and Wales.

Why meta‐research matters to regulation and governance scholarship: An illustrative evidence synthesis of responsive regulation research

“…If this is not done, there is a risk of inconsistency in enforcement (Mascini & van Wijk 2009), favoritism (Zhu & Chertow 2019), abuse of process (Lewis et al . 2017), uneven application of the law (O'Neill 2018), or rule ambiguity (Quilter & McNamara 2015). Inconsistent enforcement by and between street‐level bureaucrats may undermine the knowledge of the targets of regulation (May & Wood 2003).…”

Strength- and recovery-based approaches in forensic mental health in late modernity: Increasingly incorporating a human rights angle?

“…Examples of this include the use of preventive detention for sexual offenders (Simon, 1998), Anti-Social Behavioural Disorders that exclude individuals from certain geographical spaces (Lewis et al 2016), GPS monitoring of forensic patients on leave (Murphy et al 2017) and the (now defunct) Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder programme (Rutherford 2006). Risk is embedded in everyday life; it is not a discrete phenomenon acknowledged at interval, rather an omnipresence woven into social relations, institutional structures and physical spaces.…”

35. Crime prevention and community safety

“…It was informed by New Labour's commitment to communitarian ideals -fostering an intolerance to poor behaviour would, it was argued, open up the space for the law-abiding and the active citizen to build strong communities which could collectively condemn and confront the troublesome and look towards a more pro-social future. Alongside the establishment of new mechanisms and institutional frameworks designed to establish orderly and law-abiding communities, successive Labour governments expressed a particular concern over 'problem youth', developing a new multi-disciplinary infrastructure of local Youth Offending Teams and Youth Justice Board to work with young people on the ground and to design and implement strategies at a national level (see Lewis, et al 2016).…”

“…This stigmatizing potential was also evident in the Troubled Families initiative. Early intervention risks not only labelling young people as possible offenders of the future and hence drawing them into the 'net' of criminalisation, but also subjecting those 'at risk' to greater surveillance and monitoring which provide opportunities for self-fulfilling feedback loops (Lewis et al 2016). As a result, the risk-based prediction becomes directly or indirectly part of the cause itself on the basis of positive feedback between belief and behaviour.…”