Liberty - Protecting civil liberties, promoting human rights

In speech entitled “Asbomania” (excerpt below) Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti said

"In a press conference this morning, the Prime Minister described a radical extension of summary powers to police and local authorities. We now understand this to involve powers to evict council tenants and board up private homes for a period of three months. Many of the Government’s policies and initiatives, from marching louts to cash points to sin bins and baby asbos, may have been drafted on Westminster beer mats by ambitious advisers. But they reveal an underlying philosophy nonetheless - that the presumption of innocence is too cumbersome. What of the kids with ADHD or Tourettes who are banned from swearing and set up for inevitable failure? The suicidal woman banned from bridges? What of the mentally ill and the homeless banned from begging under pain of criminal sanction? Should this behaviour be regulated by the law, let alone mediated by police, local authority and court intervention? The reality of asbomania in 2006 is a new mutant strain of criminal law. In 1998, ASBOs may have looked like a last chance for offenders to avoid the criminal conviction. Today they appear to provide a short cut into it. Up to December of 2003, 42% of all ASBOs were breached with 55% of breaches resulting in custody. This suggests that like the traditional criminal justice system, ASBOs are very good at achieving what has never been this Government’s stated objective- namely, higher levels of incarceration. No one could contend that an ASBO has never been properly or proportionately framed against an offender. But the Prime Minister must consider the many ways in which the innocent and the vulnerable may be swept up with the guilty. With the move to summary, arbitrary and loosely defined community justice, anti-social behaviour laws have to date been at best neutral and at worst positively damaging.”

For a full copy of the speech contact Jen Corlew on 020 7378 3656 or 07973 831 128

Notes to Editors: Shami Chakrabarti’s ASBO-mania lecture was given as part of the British Institute for Human Rights Lunchtime Lecture series on Tuesday 10 January 2006