The Howard Journal Vol 43 No 2. May 2004 ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 203–211 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime Control and Social Control ALISON P. BROWN Research Fellow, Department of Applied Social Science, University of Stirling Abstract: Measures introduced to tackle anti-social behaviour have been described as crime control through the coming together of social housing management and policing. This suggests that a new form of social control is coming into effect. Taking Cohen’s classic analysis of social control, it is possible to discern the extent to which the control of anti-social behaviour is characterised by a blurring of boundaries, behaviourism, mesh-thinning and net-widening. This leads to a discussion of the inclusionary and exclusionary aspects of anti-social behaviour as a phenomenon which is linked to the changing constellation of ‘care and control’ professions. At criminology conferences, delegates can now attend separate sessions on ‘tackling anti-social behaviour’. Is this because anti-social behaviour is a distinct category of behaviour, or a subset of criminal behaviour? Can it be controlled by particular methods? Is the topic of anti-social behaviour part of the domain of criminology? In this article, I wish to consider why as part of the study of crime and criminalisation we should investigate the phenomenon of anti-social behaviour, and to propose one way in which this might be done1. I will argue that anti-social behaviour, rather than a subcriminal form of behaviour, is a social construction which indicates the creation of a new domain of professional power and knowledge. Some research carried out by the Home Office (Campbell 2002) described anti-social behaviour orders as: ‘only one weapon in the armoury available to local authorities and the police’ (p.vii). The Anti-Social Behaviour Bill introduced at Westminster in 2003 following the White Paper Respect and Responsibility (Home Office 2003) expands the powers of police officers to close premises used for drug dealing, to disperse groups, and to deal with air weapons and imitation firearms. It introduces measures, including fixed penalties, to deal with noise nuisance, truancy, parental irresponsibility and graffiti. In the realm of social housing management, it includes measures designed to improve the operation of injunctions, anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), and evictions, and removes the ‘right to buy’ for anti-social tenants. In Scotland, the AntiSocial Behaviour Bill includes similar provisions to that in England, and extends ASBOs to under 16s and introduces measures to improve the 203 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA functioning of ASBOs, such as arrest without warrant for breach of an order. Since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced measures such as ASBOs there has been limited critical response from academics to the ‘crime control’ complexion of these new developments. One exception is the critical analysis of Cowan, Pantazis and Gilroy (2001), who point to the use of such measures to tackle anti-social behaviour as part of a confluence of interests of social housing and policing. While recognising that social housing management has always been about social control, they argue that social housing is increasingly taking on the practices and discourses of crime control, such as the use of specialist undercover investigation and enforcement squads. This is associated with the trends in crime control towards: (i) responsibilisation (involvement of a wide range of agencies and creation of new ones); (ii) actuarialism (risk management), and (iii) punitiveness. Social housing has become a site of crime control because it has become a residual tenure for marginalised groups. Although crime is ubiquitous, anti-social behaviour is deemed to occur principally in social housing areas. This is partly for instrumental reasons – an attempt to solve the problem of low demand social housing by excluding undesirable applicants. But it is also part of the broader social control of marginalised populations who can be ‘managed’ in social housing. Burney (2002), however, argues that the limited use local authorities have in fact made of ASBOs demonstrates the limits of the ‘responsibilisation’ thesis. Anti-social behaviour is both a vague term that can mean anything, while also being a strongly symbolic and evocative term (like, say, ‘community’). It can encompass violence, vandalism, dog fouling, litter and young people ‘hanging around’ (Scottish Executive 2003). Speaking of the psycho-social care and control professions Cohen (1985) suggests that there is a functional necessity to describe the problem as vaguely as possible, while also using symbolic language. While the critique paraphrased above situates the control of anti-social behaviour in current and future trends, in order to explore more fully the relationship between social control and crime control, it is instructive to review more closely Cohen’s (1985) Visions of Social Control. Taking as its starting point the growth of community alternatives to imprisonment, this work introduced the now familiar metaphors of ‘widening the net’ and ‘thinning the mesh’ of social control. Of particular relevance to the present discussion, Cohen identified how the system of deviancy control blurs boundaries. First, it evades the question of whether a rule had actually been broken. It also dissolves the distinction between public and private, in two senses: the privatisation of deviancy control, and the invasion of the private sphere of life. Thirdly, the control of deviancy is no longer a separate system but penetrates the family, school and neighbourhood, all of which are employed in discipline and normalisation. In addition, Cohen also highlights the dominance of behaviourism and a lack of concern with causes and states of mind as characteristic of contemporary control systems. As the subtitle of Visions of Social Control suggested, classification is a central feature of the system, and the expansion of 204 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004 deviancy control professions leads to more classification systems to create new categories of deviance, which must then be filled. Here we will consider the boundaries associated with anti-social behaviour and the relevance of Cohen’s analysis of blurred boundaries, behaviourism and the drive to classify. This will help to address the question of whose interests were furthered by the introduction of civil law powers, rather than, say, tougher police powers. Blurred Boundaries, Rule-breaking and Law-breaking One striking characteristic of anti-social behaviour is that it regards as irrelevant whether the criminal law has been broken. Instead, it substitutes for breach of the criminal law a breach of the civil law – that tenants should not cause a nuisance or disturbance nor allow their visitors to do so (this is enshrined not only in individual tenancy contracts but statutory grounds for eviction that apply to a whole class of tenants). Anti-social behaviour thus blurs the fundamental boundary between the civil and criminal law (Burney 2002). It also substitutes a rule so vague almost anything could break it. Anti-social behaviour has become an ‘all-embracing’ category with ‘intangible properties and proportions’ (Burney 2002, p.482). Probationary tenancies, which have dissolved the assumption (general ‘rule’) of security of tenure in social housing, complement anti-social behaviour orders in the new range of measures. So, too, do Acceptable Behaviour Agreements, which have the appearance of a contract, and may even be given that name, but which have an uncertain status, not enforceable as a contract but not without consequences for the future of one’s tenancy. Another manifestation of this boundary-blurring is the debate over the standard of proof required for the court to grant an ASBO (Blake 2002), and the proposals for witness protection (Scottish Executive 2003), both of which send ASBOs towards the realm of criminal law. Nevertheless, it is not primarily breach of this law that triggers intervention against antisocial behaviour, but the level of complaints received by neighbours. A case goes to court not to prove that someone is a perpetrator of anti-social behaviour; but to authorise a sanction against the one who is already a perpetrator. Moreover, tenancies are no longer managed solely through the ‘stick’ of legal action, but also by the ‘carrot’ of rewards for good tenants (speedier repairs, for example, proposes the Scottish Executive (2003)). This reflects Cohen’s analysis, which suggested that management of deviant or potentially deviant groups characterised the move away from rulebreaking as the reason for intervention. Blurring Boundaries: Public and Private In relation to anti-social behaviour, the privatisation process, or at least the blurring of public and private, has two aspects. First, the main agency of control is no longer the police but social landlords. ASBOs were introduced following lobbying and evidence-gathering by social landlords (Burney 2002). There are differences between jurisdictions, however; unlike in 205 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004 England and Wales, in Scotland, the local authority is firmly the lead agency, with the police in the role of assistant in gathering evidence, or hindered by its inability to do so. At central government level in Scotland, ministerial responsibility for anti-social behaviour lies with the minister responsible for housing. Social landlords, however, are increasingly taking on the structures and ethos of the private sector. Landlords other than local authorities have the power to apply for ASBOs. Moreover, if smaller landlords do not wish to take on this role themselves, local authorities increasingly will, as a commercial operation, contract out their services to investigate and prepare cases, and may sub-contract to private investigation agencies. Conversely, the government proposes that private landlords could be made liable for actions of tenants (Scottish Executive 2003; and see the Scottish Anti-Social Behaviour Bill). In the second sense of privatisation, the blurring of public and private, anti-social behaviour opens people’s homes and private lives to surveillance. Anti-social behaviour case reports note the level of cleanliness of the perpetrator’s home, unusual appearance and personal hygiene, and not only the volume of the music but also, if the perpetrator had particularly poor taste, the name of the singer and song. Blurring Boundaries: Normalisation Anti-social behaviour involves the use of the neighbourhood in deviancy control. ‘Communities’ may become involved in the preparation of strategies to tackle anti-social behaviour (Scottish Executive 2003). Neighbours are the catalyst for investigation and the primarily source of evidence. Investigators take upon themselves the duty to support and advise neighbours, for example, with 24-hour on-call rapid response and lengthy preparation in advance of having to testify in court. It also increasingly involves the family and school in the control of both children and adults, as local authorities utilise acceptable behaviour agreements and parental responsibility orders, which may involve case conferencing with schools and social services. Landlords attempt to reform dysfunctional families. Anti-social families are offered a support worker to help develop positive discipline and regular routine in the home, at the same time as the threat of eviction is held up to them. Community reparation orders aim to ensure that the perpetrator makes amends to ‘the community’ and, through this process, comes under its socialising influence. Behaviourism and Classification Anti-social behaviour as social control therefore fits the ‘blurring of boundaries’ thesis. Furthermore, as its name suggests, the creation of ‘antisocial behaviour’ is a triumph of behaviourism. If no longer interested in causes, crime control still retains a concern for motivation at certain stages in the process. Anti-social behaviour is purely about behaviour. Motivation and intention are largely irrelevant. This explains why anti-social behaviour control is unconcerned about mental health problems, learning 206 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004 difficulties, addictions, domestic violence and other potential ‘mitigating’ factors that are common features of anti-social behaviour cases. Turning to the final point distilled from Cohen, does anti-social behaviour represent a new classification based on the expansion of the power-knowledge of deviancy control professionals? I suggest that this is the case in one of two senses. On the one hand, the anti-social family or tenant is a new classification. It represents a shift of intimate knowledge away from the police and community ‘corrections’ professionals to landlords, who manage a shrinking number of tenants but manage them more closely. Housing managers are increasingly concerned with individual behaviour, particularly in preventing or reducing deviant or criminal behaviour (Clapham 1997). Cohen describes how ‘hard end’ professions (police, prisons) dump the ‘soft end’ clients on ‘soft end’ professionals, who in turn create their own domains of power. Anti-social behaviour entails the appropriation by the housing management profession of an area of expertise and authority that has to be demarcated as separate disciplinary territory from that of the police. Partnership working is inevitably fraught with tension as two large hierarchical organisations try to define their area of control both materially (who conducts investigations, who asks who for information) and in the arena of representations (who speaks about anti-social behaviour in this area). A new profession is forming around anti-social behaviour, with its own purposes and methods for gathering knowledge. On the other hand, this new classification is based on a form of power and knowledge which is of a different order to that described by Cohen. For Cohen, there is an essential continuity between the old institutional control system and the new community control system; the same ‘care and control’ experts and rituals in a new setting, creating new classifications. Central to the central process of classification is testing of the individual psyche, the domain of positivist psychology. Dealing with anti-social behaviour, however, is a new set of professionals with none of the psychological practices and discourses of classification, tests and predictions. Even social workers, the paradigmatic ‘care and control’ professionals, are more often than not criticised for their lack of involvement with anti-social cases, or of undermining the control of anti-social behaviour by trying to prevent the eviction of families. Anti-social behaviour may represent system expansion based on professional self-interest, but this interest is not in the power of scientific knowledge. Anti-social behaviour officers may gather detailed knowledge about perpetrators, but the discourse is one of ‘common sense’ morality rather than pathology. Nets and Meshes Net widening and mesh thinning: these metaphors suggest that we are bringing into the control system people and actions that previously would have been missed. This is not a straightforward proposition. Before it became a classification, people engaged in anti-social behaviour often escaped the exclusionary force of the criminal justice system for two 207 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004 reasons. One is well established. Anti-social behaviour came into being because of witness intimidation and the difficulties of gathering evidence of a sufficient standard for a criminal conviction (Burney 2000). In short, the police knew that they could not construct a case that would lead to a significant sentence to keep perpetrators out of circulation. Secondly, and a point that merits further empirical investigation, is the possibility that the police do not treat anti-social behaviour as ‘real’ crime. This may be because often it does not involve loss or damage to private property. It may be because it is often based in domestic or family disputes, rather than ‘stranger’ perpetrators. Or it may be that it is perpetrated by children and other classes of people not regarded as fully ‘adult’, that is, people with learning disabilities, mental illness, and women, particularly those with alcohol or drug problems. This might lead to the conclusion that anti-social behaviour is a process by which new categories of people and behaviour are brought into the control system. Leaving to one side the social context of anti-social behaviour and the characteristics of its perpetrators, we can consider at this point, in general terms, the nature of such behaviour, and whether it is ‘sub-criminal’. The research from the Home Office (Campbell 2002) states that the reason for the introduction of ASBOs was to deal with persistent behaviour that cannot be dealt with by the criminal law because the incidents in isolation are ‘trivial’. In addition, Scottish Executive research (Brown et al. 2003) took as its starting point two assumptions: that anti-social behaviour is a lower-order category of behaviour, which can be dealt with by mediation as a lower-order mechanism, and that anti-social behaviour consists primarily of disputes between neighbours. Anti-social behaviour, however, is not a trivial or sub-criminal form of behaviour. The same Home Office study (Campbell 2002) reported that ASBOs are often preceded by a long history of criminality (for perpetrators with convictions, the mean number was 13; the most common offences were theft, criminal damage, burglary, vehicle crime, assault, disorder, drug offences and harassment). In the Scottish Executive study, in at least half of cases there was a long history of convictions. All ASBO and repossession cases involved serious and repeated incidents over a long period, of various combinations of loud music, shouting and swearing, fighting, verbal abuse, banging doors, barking and fouling by dogs, and damage to common areas. In most cases, it involved the defendant and visitors, and often disputes with visitors, other family members, or expartners. All cases involved problems with several neighbours. In many cases, the problem was solved by the perpetrator being imprisoned for reasons other than breach of ASBO. In most cases, dozens of police callouts had been made and these formed one of the main sources of evidence relied upon by local authorities. Not surprisingly, the research found that anti-social behaviour cases were in contrast to the nature of neighbour disputes found in mediation services, and were unlikely to be resolved by mediation alone. Moreover, in the Scottish Executive study, the majority of cases involved perpetrators with identified mental health problems or alcoholism, and at 208 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004 least one case, a person with a learning disability sufficient to warrant the services of a specialist housing and support provider. Many of the households with children had long-term social work involvement. Drug dealing was a factor in several cases. In other words, the situations were generally not essentially neighbour disputes, but problems in themselves, which the system (the penal-welfare complex) had failed to manage before and was now, in response to demands from neighbours, attempting to control by the new anti-social behaviour route. Rather than assume that anti-social behaviour is about increasing the scope of social control, it is perhaps more instructive to see it as an illustration of the failure of social control. To return to the fishing metaphor, it is more mesh thinning than net widening. In other words, people and behaviour that have previously been in the net but slipped through are now being caught. Moreover, the mesh is thinner in the sense that closer surveillance is now possible. Housing investigation teams cannot fail to find anti-social behaviour if they, unlike the police, are available at all hours of the day and night to do precisely that. Inclusion and Exclusion For Cowan, Pantazis and Gilroy, the processes whereby social housing is a site of crime control are exclusionary. They suggest that crime control processes of separation and exclusion are inappropriate methods for social housing. For Cohen, however, exclusionary and inclusionary forms of social control can co-exist. In relation to anti-social behaviour, then, two qualifications can be made to the assertion of unequivocal exclusion. Exclusion and inclusion co-exist in tension in social housing, creating a split between the cultures of ‘inclusive’ housing managers and support workers and ‘excluding’ anti-social behaviour investigators and enforcers. But this split can also dissolve to create the package of ‘care and control’ that encourages perpetrators to reform. Furthermore, unlike in the case of community corrections, exclusion comes about other than through the criminal justice system. Although antisocial behaviour orders are backed by criminal sanctions for breach, prosecutors do not give them priority. People are unlikely to be imprisoned for anti-social behaviour (except perhaps in rural areas where police, prosecutors and judges have time on their hands and higher standards of behaviour to uphold). Eviction is a more likely sanction than imprisonment, and probably far more serious in its consequences as a way of removing people. Courts, however, do not sanction eviction lightly. In practice, therefore, local authorities may use ASBOs and techniques of surveillance and investigation primarily as a way of guaranteeing a swifter and surer eviction. Breach of ASBO is instrumental, not as something that attracts criminal sanctions but, within the civil framework, as an accepted way to demonstrate that eviction is justified. Unlike community corrections, behind anti-social behaviour lies not the threat of removal to an institution, but removal into homelessness, into nowhere. Rather than face an eviction, most people opt to exclude themselves by accepting a transfer out of their neighbourhood, or by leaving the area altogether. 209 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004 Conclusion According to the government, anti-social behaviour orders are designed to deter and prevent anti-social behaviour ‘without having to resort to criminal sanctions’ (Campbell 2002). On the contrary, I would argue that anti-social behaviour is a means by which one part of the State asserts its right to use force in the absence of ‘effective’ action by police and prosecutors and the criminal justice system. Rather than deterrent or preventative, it is primarily reactive; the vast majority of time is spent in gathering evidence and preparing a case for court. Anti-social behaviour measures are found not before but after criminal sanctions; or, rather, sandwiched between two rounds of them. Criminology’s attention to housing has usually been in relation to crime prevention by housing design, how behaviour is influenced by ‘the environment’. This neglects the role of housing professionals in actively controlling behaviour. Anti-social behaviour orders and associated ‘civil’ means of control are now an intrinsic part of the government’s crime and disorder policy, and are therefore a prime topic for criminological analysis. On the other hand, it is essential to take into account the contradictions within this process. Far fewer anti-social behaviour orders have been imposed than was anticipated, and it has been suggested that this indicates the limits of the ‘responsibilisation’ thesis; that is, there are limits to the involvement of non-police agencies in crime control (Burney 2002). Furthermore, Cohen cautions against ‘adversarial nihilism’. There may be unintended positive consequences of anti-social behaviour policies. For example, some perpetrators regulate their behaviour and are no longer subject to surveillance, or accept health and welfare services that they find beneficial; some women escape eviction and are offered housing further away from abusive ex-partners. Moreover, anti-social behaviour is not solely a means to control social housing tenants: ASBOs have been taken against owner-occupiers and private tenants. Finally, critical commentators may assume that if joint working between landlords and the police is problematic, this is because the police are a bad influence. In practice, we may find the police’s legalistic approach to be a moderating influence on civilian investigators who apply their own moral codes. Anti-social behaviour is being constructed in official discourse as a form of behaviour, a property inherent to the behaviour itself, just as the category ‘crime’ is constructed as a self-evident category, reflecting some inherent property of the behaviour. Just as criminology shifts our attention from crime to criminalisation, so it can consider the process by which certain behaviour becomes ‘anti-social’. Utilising the metaphors of blurring the boundaries and thinning the mesh, it is possible to locate anti-social behaviour as a system of social control based on new privatisations, new rule-evasions, new constellations of power-knowledge and new routes of exclusion. Anti-social behaviour is ‘found’ largely in social housing areas because the physical presence of ‘investigatory’ people and technology ensure that it will be found. Anti-social behaviour is thus partly a product of 210 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004 social housing management. This suggests a shared line of enquiry for criminology and ‘housing studies’.2 Notes 1 This discussion is based partly on observations made during fieldwork for a study of cost-effectiveness of anti-social behaviour control in Scotland (Brown et al. 2003). Because anti-social behaviour orders have so far not been used against people aged under 16 years, the control of anti-social behaviour in Scotland has, to date, had a slightly different emphasis from that in England and Wales. 2 Acknowledgement: The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. References Blake, L. (2002) ‘Ain’t misbehavin’, Estates Gazette, 23, 140–1. Brown, A.P., Barclay, A., Simmons, R. and Eley, S. (2003) The Role of Mediation in Tackling Neighbour Dispute and Anti-Social Behaviour, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive Social Research. Burney, E. (2000) ‘Controlling household behaviour: nasty neighbours, civil law and crime prevention’, Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 2, 7–15. Burney, E. (2002) ‘Talking tough, acting coy: what happened to the anti-social behaviour order?’, Howard Journal, 41, 469–84. Campbell, S. (2002) A Review of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Home Office Research Study No.236), London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. Clapham, D. (1997) ‘The social construction of housing management research’, Urban Studies, 34, 761–74. Cohen, S. (1985) Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification, Cambridge: Polity. Cowan, D., Pantazis, C. and Gilroy, R. (2001) ‘Social housing as crime control: an examination of the role of housing management in policing sex offenders’, Social and Legal Studies, 10, 435–57. Home Office (2003) Respect and Responsibility: Taking a Stand Against Anti-Social Behaviour, London: Home Office. Scottish Executive (2003) Putting Our Communities First: A Strategy for Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Date submitted: September 2003 Date accepted: October 2003 211 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004