Getting tough?

Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, has announced that he will be getting tough on persistent ASBO offenders. He will prosecute those who break the conditions.

Do you believe it? The police have not hitherto shown much inclination to do anything other than caution, and have their time fully occupied meeting all the other government directives, and form-filling.

This sounds like the usual periodic stick waving by a government which has lost control and doesn't have time to think of anything else. It was clearly prompted by the recent scandal of the Ms. Pilkington and other cases.

So what exactly would he have done? Would he have sent offenders to prison, overruling the prison governors' view that short sentences do not work and ignoring the fact that the prisons are full? Would he have more community sentences, which don't work, and keeping the juvenile offenders out of school?

One of the problems is the definition of antisocial behaviour, which covers everything from dropping litter, to playing music too loudly, to calling insults, to heaving bricks through someone's window, to terrifying vulnerable people. It is too broad and somewhere along the scale it ceases to be antisocial behaviour and becomes crime.

Some American cities have reduced all grades of offending by a zero-tolerance approach. None of it is acceptable. We may not wish to follow their examples, but we must detach some offences and label them as crime and then prosecute them them with the full power of the law.