This document discusses how measures introduced to tackle anti-social behavior have led to a new form of social control through the blurring of boundaries between social housing management and policing. It analyzes anti-social behavior through the framework proposed by Cohen regarding social control, including the blurring of boundaries between public and private, an emphasis on behaviorism over causes, and the expansion of control professions and new classifications of deviance. The document argues that anti-social behavior represents a new domain of professional power and knowledge for social housing managers rather than a truly sub-criminal form of behavior, as those subject to measures for anti-social behavior often have long histories of criminal convictions.

1. 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 sub-
criminal 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) de-
scribed 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 Anti-
Social Behaviour Bill includes similar provisions to that in England, and
extends ASBOs to under 16s and introduces measures to improve the
The Howard Journal Vol 43 No 2. May 2004
ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 203–211
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and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

2. 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 para-
phrased 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
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3. 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 en-
forceable 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 anti-
social 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 rule-
breaking 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
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4. 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 investiga-
tion 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 surveil-
lance. 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 ‘anti-
social 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 be-
haviour control is unconcerned about mental health problems, learning
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5. 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 profes-
sion 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 predic-
tions. Even social workers, the paradigmatic ‘care and control’ profes-
sionals, 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
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6. 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 ex-
partners. 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 call-
outs 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
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7. 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 anti-
social 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 imprison-
ment, 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 correc-
tions, 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.
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8. 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
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9. 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.
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Date submitted: September 2003
Date accepted: October 2003
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