Eliminating the Visible: Exploring the Community Response to Anti-social Behaviour

Abstract

New Labour has identified combating anti-social behaviour as one of its key policies since 1997 and has introduced a range of disciplinary measures to tackle it. Included in these measures are policies which set out to involve local communities in decision- making regarding how the policing of anti-social behaviour is to be carried out.

This case study focuses on the way in which one community, or at least a vocal minority of that community, has influenced the way in which anti-social behaviour policies have been implemented.

Those representing the community had only one interest, which was to ensure that the people with a street lifestyle disappeared from the streets. What happened to them afterwards was of little interest. This contrasted with the police and local council who were interested in a longer-term, reasoned solution to the problem.

In this particular study, the more considered approach of the police and local authority was overwhelmed by the demands by the community for the people with a street lifestyle to be expelled from the area. This duly happened through the imposition of a range of disciplinary measures.

We suggest however that this exclusionary approach to deviant groups has a long tradition. Using Rutherford's concepts of visibility and elimination, we explore the history of community responses to deviant groups and locate the specific case study within a long tradition of communities' desires to expel deviants. We suggest finally that the more New Labour involves local communities in combating anti-social behaviour, the more prominent these themes are likely to become.