A cynical political gesture

There's the 15-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder, who was served with an Antisocial Behaviour Order (Asbo) instructing him, on pain of a jail sentence of up to five years, not to stare over his neighbours' fence into their garden.

There's the boy of the same age with Tourette's syndrome, which can involve an inability to stop shouting out profanities, whose Asbo banned him from swearing in public - something he literally cannot control.

There's the 12 year-old girl with Asperger's against whom an Asbo was sought because she was mimicking the voices of her parents arguing with their neighbours.

There's the 23-year old woman who had repeatedly tried to commit suicide and who was served with an Asbo banning her from going near railway lines, rivers, or bridges. There's the one-legged beggar with a learning disability who was sent to prison for breaching an Asbo that warned him not to show his stump while begging.

These are some of the absurdities perpetrated under the British Asbo system. The problem with them is not just that they are stupid and cruel in themselves, but that they make a mockery of a very serious matter: antisocial behaviour. Yobbery is a human rights issue too.

It has a disproportionate effect on the poor, the old, the young and the vulnerable. It takes away the freedom of the elderly woman who scuttles out to the shops with her head down once a day and then scuttles back home because she's afraid.

Of the soft lad who has to steel himself before he walks to the bus stop. Of the kids who can't play outside the door of the flat because they might pick up used syringes. Of the migrant worker who tries not to see the racist graffiti on her wall. Of the woman who's kept awake by the screech of stolen cars.

Antisocial behaviour matters to the lives of too many people and causes too much daily misery to be the object of cynical gesture politics. But guess what we're going to get?

Last week, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles, published a damning report in which he remarked of Asbos that "one cannot but wonder, indeed, whether their purpose is not more to reassure the public that something is being done . . . than the actual prevention of the antisocial behaviour itself". Which is exactly why Michael McDowell loves them. They are a cheap way to create the appearance that something is being done.

Though, to be fair, something really will be achieved in the long term: the problem will get worse. As Gil-Robles also pointed out, there is a well-established relationship between the number of young people taken into custody and the number who go on to become career criminals. Kids are being sent to jail in the UK for breaching Asbos that themselves concerned behaviour that was not criminal.

Because the system, therefore, increases the numbers of young people in custody, Gil-Robles argued that it is "more likely to exacerbate antisocial behaviour and crime amongst youths than effectively prevent it". We know for sure that Michael McDowell's plans for Asbos are a cynical gesture because they are a way of distracting attention from two obvious realities. One is that there is actually a very broad consensus about what we need to do about young people in trouble.

The Children Act, which was passed with all-party support, is an excellent piece of legislation.

As well as establishing a proper system of juvenile justice, it creates a wide range of new sanctions against young people involved in crime. There are parental supervision orders, requiring parents, for example, to be treated for alcoholism or to exert control over their children. There is a range of community-based sanctions, including controls over where offenders may go and with whom they may associate. The Act strikes a balance that is supported by almost everyone who works in the field. So what's the problem? Implementing the Act needs resources, planning and a long-term commitment. Asbos may achieve nothing, but they are cheap, apparently simple, and deliver a short-term pre-election buzz.

The other problem that Michael McDowell refuses to deal with is even more basic: policing. To the appalling crisis of confidence in An Garda Síochána he offers a weak and clumsy version of the ombudsman system in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, he will give the Garda two new powers to abuse. They will have Asbos (Frank McBrearty jnr invited a press conference in Dublin last week to imagine the number of Asbos his family would have received.)

And they will have, from the new Criminal Justice Bill, the comfort of knowing that witness statements that are subsequently retracted (like many of those concocted for use against the McBreartys) will be admissible in court as evidence. Thus the job of constructing the best bulwark against crime and antisocial behaviour - a trusted, well-resourced police force operating within communities - is being flunked.

If Michael McDowell was even vaguely serious about tackling antisocial behaviour, he'd be getting to grips with the problems in the Garda and demanding that his Cabinet colleagues fully implement the Children Act.

Since, he isn't, we'll get Asbos instead.