Concerns raised over Asbos breaches

Home Office figures have revealed that almost half of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos) issued had been breached up to the end of 2005.

The overall Asbo breach rate was 47%, with a 41% breach rate for adults and a 57% breach rate for juveniles.

This is up on the previous overall breach rate of 42% - 38% for adults and 47% for juveniles up to December 2003.

However, the government maintain that Asbos "bring much needed respite to communities up and down the country."

The number of Asbos issued up to the end of 2005 show that a total of 9,853 have now been issued. Of these, 810 were issued between October and December 2005. The majority, 56% of Asbos were made against adults, while 41% were given to juveniles. In all 4,060 Asbos were issued in 2005, compared with 3,440 in 2004 and 1,336 in 2003.

Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said: "Anti-social behaviour brings misery to people up and down the country, disrupting their lives and harming communities. These figures show that local agencies use them as an effective way to stop bad behaviour and to hand their local neighbourhoods back to the law abiding majority.

"Today's report from the National Audit Office recognises that our approach to tackling anti-social behaviour works. In the cases sampled by the NAO, almost two thirds of people stopped behaving anti-socially after one intervention; over four out of five stopped after two; and after three, bad behaviour had been stopped in more than nine out of ten cases."

However, NAO chief Sir John Bourne called for more action to be taken against what he described as the "hard core" offenders.

(SP/JM)