Making People Behave: Anti-Social Behaviour, Politics and Policy, * Elizabeth Burney * Cullompton, Devon, Willan Publishing, 2005, pp. viii + 200, ISBN 1 84392 137 5 (pbk), ISBN 1 84392 138 3 (hbk), 17.99 (pbk), 40.00 (hbk)

Abstract

Crimes come in many guises: there are grave crimes such as murder, serious crimes like burglary and minor offences as with some traffic offences. Further, there are those familiar experiences in life that we might all encounter at some time, such as noisy neighbours, gaggles of young people ‘hanging about’ on the corner of our street, and minor vandalism of our property. Sometimes these experiences are petty crimes, but mostly they are an irritation, a nuisance, although over time can give rise to anger, conflict, and fear. Such everyday nuisances have recently been captured by the popular term ‘anti-social behaviour’. Of course, there is nothing new about anti-social behaviour. The concept has been around for years; however, it is only since the late 1990s that we have become preoccupied with anti-social behaviour. The shift from plain everyday anti-social behaviour to the menace of anti-social behaviour can be traced to a political fascination with the notion of zero-tolerance. The philosophy underpinning zero-tolerance is straightforward: nothing that disturbs the equilibrium—a drunk returning home from a party, a homeless person sleeping on a bench, or a broken window—is bearable. The zero-tolerance approach, credited as cleaning up New York when introduced by Mayor Guiliani, caught both the headlines and the attention of politicians, and quickly entered popular parlance. Several cities followed New York’s example and the deal was done: anti-social behaviour was the new moral panic—the latest scourge to blight our existence—and if we could make it go away, then life would be so much better.