"There is no greater assault on people's quality of life than crime and anti-social behaviour. As this report shows, the Government has tried to tackle anti-social behaviour by headline-grabbing initiatives and short-term fixes.
With the cost of responding to anti-social behaviour currently running at some £3.4 billion a year the Home Office needs to get its act together. It is astonishing that the Government has not collected any information on the effectiveness of different measures on different groups of offenders and even supplied the National Audit Office with incorrect data on perceptions around the country of anti-social behaviour.
Whilst local police are finding ASBOs a useful tool in their armoury, there needs to be stricter enforcement once ASBOs have been issued if they are not to be seen as just another government gimmick. With half of all ASBOs being breached, and teenagers now treating them as a 'badge of honour', it isn't surprising that Labour's approach just isn't working."
Mr Dunne was speaking as the Committee published its report which, on the basis of evidence from the Home Office and the Respect Task Force, examined evidence emerging from the sample of 893 cases of individuals receiving anti-social behaviour interventions reviewed by the National Audit Office.
The Committee had also questioned the Home Office about its recent disclosure that a backlog of 27,500 notifications of convictions of British citizens abroad had been passed to the Association of Chief Police Officers for checking and entering on the Police National Computer in March 2006 after being allowed to build up over several years.
Anti-social behaviour by a small proportion of individuals and families brings misery and despair to local communities. Responding to reports of anti-social behaviour in England and Wales costs government agencies around £3.4 billion a year. There are also significant indirect costs to local communities and businesses, as well as emotional costs to victims and witnesses. In 2003 the Home Office formed the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit with an annual budget of £25 million to design and implement the Government's policy on anti-social behaviour. In September 2005 the Government announced the creation of the cross government Respect Task Force to take forward the anti-social behaviour agenda and in January 2006 the Government published the Respect Action Plan.
Anti-social behaviour measures were first introduced in the mid 1990s, and since this time more powers and measures have been added to give local authorities, the police and others a toolkit of measures with which to tackle incidents of anti-social behaviour. People's perception of the level of anti-social behaviour varies by gender, area and age, with people most likely to perceive high levels in areas of greatest social deprivation. Comparable local areas use different approaches to dealing with anti
