The government has announced Respect Orders, new powers to be introduced in the forthcoming Crime and Policing Bill. These will allow the police and councils to bar people from town centres or parks, as well as to impose positive behavioural requirements. Breaking the order will be a criminal offence: a person could be arrested and imprisoned for up to two years, or subject to other restrictions such as a curfew or community service.
The Manifesto Club response is as follows:
“The government’s announcement of ‘Respect Orders’ is high on rhetoric, low on substance. The government states that it is getting ‘tough’ on ‘hooligans who wreck havoc on local communities’, but has not provided basic details on the operation of this new power.
For example, will Respect Orders be issued through a court, or will they be issued on the spot by officers? If through a court, will the recipient have a right to legal aid for a defence lawyer, in order to ensure that the evidence is scrutinised before orders are issued?
And what will be the condition for issuing Respect Orders: will it be ‘harassment, alarm and distress’, as with current Civil Injunctions and Dispersal Notices; or ‘nuisance or annoyance’, as with Civil Injunctions in a housing context; or ‘detrimental effect’, as with Community Protection Notices?
The government has not even been clear on whether the Respect Order will replace the Civil Injunction, saying only that it will ‘partially replace’ it.
These questions will decide how the power will be used, and who it will be used against.
The government has not explained why new powers are needed. After all:
- Police officers already have powers to ban people from public spaces, with the Dispersal Notice, and this is an arrestable and imprisonable offence.
- It is common for Community Protection Notices to contain restrictions on entering certain areas, and they can also contain positive requirements such as drug treatment; breach of a CPN is a criminal offence.
- Many Public Spaces Protection Orders include a power for police and council officers to bar people from public spaces.
- Breach of a Civil Injunction is contempt of court, and hundreds of people have been imprisoned for civil injunction breach, including for the offence of entering a banned area.
The government states that the power will be used against ‘hooligans’, whoever they are. However, without adequate legal procedure, and high standards of defence and scrutiny, there is no telling who Respect Orders will be used against.
When powers do not come with adequate legal protection, they are used in an arbitrary and sometimes biased manner, according to the convenience, whim or prejudices of local police and council officers.
For example, dispersal notices have been used against a disabled man handing out food for the homeless, political protestors chatting about which pub to go to, and football supporters in a coach on their way to a match. Community Protection Notices have been issued to people feeding birds in their gardens, to publicans for holding ‘noisy’ pub quizzes, and to homeless people. Those imprisoned for violating a Civil Injunction include a pensioner for feeding the pigeons.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the government is announcing these orders primarily – or perhaps solely – for its own PR purposes, in order to appear that it is ‘taking action’. This is a dangerous approach to the creation of new legal powers. People risk being imprisoned for the sake of political point-scoring.
In truth, the current ASB ‘toolkit’ is bristling with ‘tough’ powers: that is, largely unaccountable powers that have significant consequences for the recipient. These powers have been subject to grave misuse and have led to the punishment of thousands of innocent people, while doing nothing to make streets safer or more pleasant.
It is disappointing that existing ASB powers have never been subject to review or scrutiny by the Home Office or any policing or council body. The Home Office doesn’t even collect basic statistics on the use of these powers, in spite of calls from bodies including JUSTICE and the Civil Justice Council.
Rather than new powers, what is needed is a thorough review of existing powers, and the creation of standards to ensure that powers are used proportionately and effectively.”