Should the state have the power to throw you in jail because you're obnoxious, annoying, or generally a community nuisance? That seems to be what is occurring in Britain: police can obtain an "Anti-Social Behavior Order" that restricts a person's ability to do legal things. Violators can be thrown in jail.

The Economist reports:

The police lack the time to collect evidence; witnesses are too scared to testify; wrongdoing is difficult to prove; and sentences are too mild. ... Prosecutors and the police are ... pleased. Their powers to deal with low-level offences used to be weak. Now they are so draconian that they undermine the principles on which the criminal justice system is built.

The power to obtain anti-social behaviour orders was granted to the police and local authorities on the assumption that they were to be used with restraint. Just as the government promises to subject only genuinely scary terrorists to house arrest, so the forces of law and order are supposed to aim their most potent weapon only at the most dedicated and egregious troublemakers. Don't worry, goes the typically British assurance: our powers may be draconian, but decency and common sense will ensure we don't overuse them.

This sounds like an all-too-common situation: authorities find that standard laws are inadequate to deal with a social problems, so they adopt new laws that make it much easier to clamp down on the problem. Unfortunately, use of these new police powers is expanded dramatically and used in ways that probably weren't originally intended...

Troublemakers as young as ten years old can be barred from entering neighbourhoods, ringing doorbells, using public transport and mobile phones or even uttering certain words for a minimum of two years. Securing an ASBO is easy. Hearsay evidence, for instance, is admissible in court. The consequences of stepping out of line are weighty: a maximum of five years in prison for doing something that is not necessarily an offence in law. Not surprisingly, such a powerful weapon is popular: more than a thousand ASBOs were handed out in the first half of 2004.

So, based upon mere hearsay evidence you can be banded a "troublemaker" such that your actions can be restricted in ways that don't apply to your friends or neighbors. If you violate the order, you can be put in jail or at least just fined. Again, all of this can start with hearsay evidence from people who simply don't like you

Obtaining an ASBO is so easy (fewer than one in 70 applications are turned down) that they have been used to tackle a wide range of undesirable behaviour. ASBOs allow the police to nail people for offences too minor to be criminal. 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.

More worryingly, ASBOs allow the police to bypass the normal procedures of criminal justice when they suspect somebody of serious criminal activity but can't prove it. ... These are, indeed, serious problems; but the government needs to deal with them, not create new, lazy ways around them. The safeguards built into the criminal justice system are there for a good reason. If the police think a man is a drug dealer but can't prove it, he shouldn't go to jail, however often he uses his mobile phone.

According to The Economist, ASBOs are much more common in some areas (more than 20 are handed out every month in Manchester) and rare in other areas (Only 49 have been handed out in Sheffield since 1999). Such differential application of the same police powers suggests very strongly that we are looking at a power that not only can be abused, but is being abused. Perhaps there are objective reasons for the difference — perhaps people in Manchester are much worse than those in Sheffield — but I am inclined to doubt that this would explain the entire difference.

I know that a number of people from Britain visit this site and read the articles here — what are your feelings about the ASBOs? Do you think that they are being abused? Do you think that they are a dangerous or necessary police power?

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