Hypocrisy of McDowell's anti-social behaviour plan

The Minister plans to replicate a system that has been shown to have serious flaws in Britain, writes Joe Humphreys

The Minister plans to replicate a system that has been shown to have serious flaws in Britain, writes Joe Humphreys

Like many a (relatively) young person, I read of Michael McDowell's plans to clamp down on "anti-social behaviour" with horror. It is not so long ago I drank in public places and woke neighbours at night with drunken swearing. I've urinated against the odd lamppost, and I've even engaged in petty theft (I once woke up with a mangled Gerry Adams election poster in my bed).

Thankfully, for all concerned, I've since smartened up my act, and today I have no criminal record.

That might not be the case if the Minister's plans had been implemented before I'd grown up. Make no mistake, his Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) will criminalise young people for not maturing quickly enough.

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McDowell admires the ASBO system in Britain, which was introduced in 1999 amid mass hysteria over nuisance teenagers. Under the scheme, local authorities can get a court order restraining supposed troublemakers from playing loud music, visiting public amenities, travelling on public transport, or any other number of things linked to their alleged - but unproven - deviancy.

Securing an ASBO is easy. Hearsay evidence is admissible in court, and fewer than one in 70 applications are turned down. But the penalty for breach of an ASBO is steep: up to five years in jail for doing something that is not necessarily an offence in law.

As the Economist pointed out last month, the increase in ASBOs in Britain had matched a rise in newspaper column inches devoted to "anti-social behaviour" but a decline in vandalism, "the closest proxy for it in the statistics". The Economist continued: "Orders have been secured against crotchety old neighbours, prostitutes, beggars and mothers who argue with their children. Some of these people have subsequently been jailed for breaching their ASBOs: most absurdly, one man was sentenced to four months in prison for howling like a werewolf."

But forget about the likelihood of miscarriages of justice. Forget about the prospect of ASBOs being used for political purposes - and there is no doubt local authorities will be anxious to use them against anti-bin charge campaigners.

Forget about the negative impact ASBOs will have on young people's attitudes towards politics and the State. Forget about the fact that local authorities recently got new powers, not only to fine people for drinking in public places but to ban public gatherings that aren't licensed.

Forget about the fact that gardaí are getting new powers to tackle public order offences under the Criminal Justice Bill, 2004. Forget about the fact that an ASBO scheme will divert yet more funds away from the implementation of the Children's Act 2001.

Forget about Mr McDowell's questionable definition of "anti-social" (If loitering on a street corner is anti-social, then why not snatching a train seat from a pregnant woman? If urinating against a lamp-post is anti-social, then why not belching noxious fumes from an SUV?).

Forget about the fact that ASBOs are being introduced without any concrete proof that "anti-social behaviour" is on the rise.

The worst aspect of the Minister's plans is the hypocrisy, specifically the hypocrisy of ageing a few years and then forgetting what it's like to be young.

Mr McDowell speaks of the "little old lady" who is persecuted by kids "drinking and creating trouble" outside her house. But was he never young? In the parish where I grew up ,there was a little old lady who would ring the guards if a football was accidentally kicked into her garden.

Perhaps the Minister never gave his neighbours, or the wider public, a minute's trouble growing up. But then, I say, he was deprived of a youth - and a youth not least enjoyed by his former colleagues in the UCD Literary & Historical Society (colleagues whom he lauded in this newspaper last Saturday as "the rising generation").

In my day at "college", the L&H was famous for two things apart from debating: subsidised booze (something the Minister has already banned as part of his clampdown on binge drinking), and loud-mouthed and boorish behaviour both inside and outside of licensed premises.

Mr McDowell's plans can't be divorced from ideology. Having already shifted the economy towards Boston and away from Berlin, his party - along with willing accomplices in Fianna Fáil - wants to create a US-style criminal justice system. After all, the British government modelled its ASBO scheme on the "zero-tolerance/three-strikes and you're out" philosophy of the former New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.

The result in Ireland will be the same as in the US. An unequal legal system, which favours the rich over the poor, will become more entrenched, while our jails will fill up with a disproportionate number of youngsters from the lowest socio-economic brackets.

Is this the sort of criminal justice system, or society, we want?