None of the main parties wants to abandon Antisocial Behaviour Orders, though the Lib Dems would rather call them Acceptable Behaviour Contracts and "tackle the underlying causes" of the bad behaviour. But what should be done with the people who breach them? (More than a third do.)
Michael Howard, anxious that courts are sometimes reluctant to send people to jail on the basis of hearsay evidence, wants to withhold housing benefit from offenders, revoke their driving licences and generally "give the yobs a dose of the fear they've been dishing out to the rest of us". The Guardian's Alan Travis pointed out here yesterday that courts already punish most breaches with community penalties of some sort. Those who do go to jail are usually sentenced because of other offences. So the Lib Dems' worries that putting yobs in prison only increases the chance of them re-offending seem to have been shared by both Labour and the courts.
But which penalties would deter the offenders? It's a tough question, and the lively debate on this blog hasn't yet answered it. Nonetheless, if we were looking for a discussion panel, we couldn't really have done much better than a youth worker, a policeman, a 27-year-old in favour of corporal punishment and a man who has revised his "very liberal views" on the rehabilitation of criminals since he suffered two violent assaults and a "neighbour from hell". Spirited stuff.
