Anti-social behaviour: new proposals

James Brokenshire: 'We've announced today a consultation around the tools and powers available to the police, social landlords, councils, those agencies who are dealing with anti-social  behaviour to make it less bureaucratic, to streamline it, and to make sure those tools are more responsive to the needs of communities.

'Sadly we’ve seen that some of these measures are very bureaucratic, that it takes literally months and months and months to obtain relief for communities that may be being very hardpressed by the problems of anti-social behaviour.

'We're announcing a community trigger where if five people have made a complaint that’s not been followed through, they’re able to escalate it to the agencies that are supposed to be providing that response.

'The anti-social behaviour orders have been reducing in their effectiveness, they’re being breached in record numbers and also their usage as well; they’ve declined by about sixty per cent over the course of the last five years.

'We're replacing them with two orders: a criminal behaviour order and a crime prevention injunction which are intended to be speedier and more effective as well as also looking at the underlying behaviour as to why someone is behaving in the way that they are, so to address some of the underlying causes whether that be maybe they’re binge drinking – they've got an alcohol problem, they've got a drug problem, they've got issues with anger management, and being able to impose conditions on them so that makes them very different from the anti-social behaviour orders that have gone before. They're less bureaucratic, there'll be speedier and in so doing we believe they will provide more effective relief to communities, targeting on that small number of individuals that are causing the problems in communities and really impacting on people’s quality of life.'

Date: Mon Feb 07 15:39:33 GMT 2011