Britain Cracks Down on Nasties Like the 'Neighbor From Hell'
By SARAH LYALL
BIRMINGHAM, England â?? The first hint that all was not well with the new neighbor came the day he moved in, when he seemed strangely proud of his prison-issue electronic ankle bracelet. Things went downhill from there.
First came demands to "borrow" items like light bulbs, food, money for the bus. Then, when nearby families objected to his late-night fights and banging on the walls, the neighbor, Ian Dickens, embarked on a one-man terror campaign, blasting his music at night, shouting abuse from his windows and threatening to kill the local children.
In November, a Birmingham court decreed that enough was enough and served Mr. Dickens with an "antisocial behavior order" made possible by one of an array of measures enacted by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government since 1999 to confront what is widely seen as an erosion of civilized norms in this once polite country.
In the past four years, about 1,600 Britons have been served such orders as part of an aggressive effort by the state to police behavior that would once have been the purview of families or neighborhoods â?? everything from truancy and vandalism to drunken brawling on the street.
Using an arsenal of additional measures, the authorities can also fine or jail the parents of children who chronically skip school, impose on-the-spot fines for things like drunkenness and defacing public property and evict "neighbors from hell" from public housing. Recipients of the antisocial orders, perhaps the most extreme of the new measures, can be banned from entering certain neighborhoods or hanging out with a particular group of people â?? even from wearing certain clothes or visiting members of their own families.
Mr. Dickens, 35, was banned for five years from menacing his neighbors or setting foot around the public housing project where he had lived. When he quickly violated the order, he was nearly as quickly jailed.
Not everyone loves the new antisocial orders. Some say they stigmatize and marginalize a population that is already on the fringes of society, leaving the offenders with little hope of improvement or rehabilitation. Others argue that the orders are not used enough and are dauntingly difficult to enforce.
"The antisocial orders have become almost a joke," Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, a victims' rights group, said in an interview. "They're almost impossible to implement and very easy to break."
But in a country where gun crimes and murders are still relatively rare, conduct loosely defined as antisocial has proliferated in recent years, proponents of the measures say. In a 24-hour experiment meant to provide a snapshot of a typical day last fall, the Home Office recorded 60,000 instances of such behavior â?? from abusive words to urinating in public â?? more than one every two seconds.
"It's the single most important issue raised by voters, and it denotes how politics has changed," Frank Field, a Labor member of Parliament and the author of "The Politics of Behavior," said in an interview. "When I started, it was the politics of class, and now it's the politics of behavior."
The reasons for the rise in antisocial behavior are complex, but include the breakdown of traditional families, a decline in old habits of deference and respect and, in the view of many in government, the emergence of a social security-dependent culture that promotes a feeling of entitlement but not a feeling of responsibility.
Writing in The Observer in 2002, Mr. Blair said the problem was a result of both the postwar welfare state as well as the individualistic philosophy espoused by Conservative governments in the 1980's and early 90's, which, he said, went too far in the other direction and cut off support to those in need from whole swathes of society.
"By the mid-1990's crime was rising, there was escalating family breakdown and drug abuse, and social inequalities had widened," the prime minister wrote. "Many neighborhoods became marked by vandalism, violent crime, and the loss of civility. The basic recognition of the mutuality of duty and reciprocity of respect on which civil society depends appeared lost."
Alison Parsons, a policy manager in Birmingham's housing department, said Mr. Dickens's was by no means an isolated case. A lack of respect for others is an increasing component of life in crowded inner cities and on vast housing projects, she said. The problem is just as bad â?? or worse â?? among children, she said, because their parents no longer seem willing to discipline them.
Since 1999, when the government first empowered the courts to begin issuing the antisocial behavior orders, a large number have been served on teenagers.
In Leeds, a girl said to be the ringleader of a gang of shoplifting youths was forbidden to travel into the city center without an adult, or to wear hooded jackets, which she was in the habit of pulling over her face to conceal her identity. In Swansea, a 16-year-old boy with a string of convictions for muggings, car thefts and harassment, was sent to prison and banned, on leaving it, from seeing 19 of his partners in crime, including two members of his family.
In Neasden, northwest London, seven local youths were banned from a local housing project after terrorizing residents with foul and abusive language, committing thefts and burglaries, threatening neighbors with knives and urinating on people's doorsteps. The authorities printed their photographs on a pamphlet and distributed it to hundreds of houses and businesses in their area.
"Standards of behavior have really deteriorated," Ms. Parsons said. "Often with these kids, their parents don't set boundaries for them. Here the court is setting boundaries for the child to follow. In many cases, it might be the first time in their lives that they've been told what they can and can't do."
But Ben Overlander, a spokesman for Shelter, a charity that supports people in public housing, said antisocial orders could be too drastic a step, particularly for families with children.
"The government is too quick to issue antisocial orders and to evict people from their homes, and doesn't invest or care about rehabilitative work that addresses the root causes of antisocial behavior," he said. "If you take away someone's home and drive them into a worse situation, it's not going to give them the impetus to make their life better."
At the Woodgate Valley North housing project here, the behavior of Mr. Dickens, the antisocial neighbor, provides a window into what life can be like in cities across Britain. The neighborhood from which he was banned is notable chiefly for how deserted it looks, even though it is full of tenants. On a recent afternoon, no one was out on the streets.
Little bits of debris swirled in the wind. Signs everywhere commanded, "No Ball Playing," as if anyone would want to. The houses, low-slung concrete boxes the color of ash, seem designed to ensure that people "keep themselves to themselves," as the British say.
Mr. Dickens moved in about three years ago and it soon became clear that he was trouble, said Ken Dowling, who lived next door with his wife and three children.
"He would have his girlfriends in, and you could hear them screaming and beating each other up," Mr. Dowling said. "When I complained, he revved up his motorcycle at 2 a.m. outside our window." He had all-night parties and turned the music up so loud that the pictures shook in the Dowlings' living room.
"Things got worse and worse, until at one point he was sitting outside the house threatening to bomb it," said Mr. Dowling, 34. Mr. Dickens started menacing his neighbor on the other side, a single mother named Kelly Johnson, too. But it was not until he shouted abusively at officials in the local housing office that Birmingham took action.
In court, Mr. Dickens argued that he had felt unsafe in his apartment. "I am in a hole, and I do not want to dig any deeper," he said. But the authorities were unconvinced. "Efforts were made to change this man's behavior, but he wouldn't respond," said Phil Murphy, a City Council member.
Back at his now-quiet home, Mr. Dowling made a familiar complaint: behavior has changed irrevocably since he was a child and felt constrained by the potential discipline of his parents and their neighbors.
He remembered, as a boy, breaking a neighbor's window. "He kicked me all the way back to my dad's, and then my dad kicked me all the way back in the other direction," he said. "I never did it again."
