ASBO'd Out

I haven't posted for a while - a death in the family, but I'm back now and feeling excercised about ASBO's. If you don't know what they are ASBO = Anti-Social Behaviour Order. You can be given one for a range of badness - racism, making your neighbour's lives hell (good), shouting and swearing in the street when you have Tourettes (mistake), hitting people when you have autism (just ridiculous) and so on. Although you do not get a criminal record when given an ASBO, you can be sent to jail if you break the conditions. There's no doubt in my mind that if they are thoughtfully applied they can dramatically improve life for people on, for example, estates overrun by loud noisy neighbours or kids yelling racist abiuse at the owner sof the local cornershop. But there's the rub.

My agency recently had a client who was ASBO'd for boozing and fighting in the town - fair enough you might say. Except the client didn't understand the conditions - learning disability. And the ASBO excluded the client from our premises where treatment was available and being given with some success. So the client got arrested for coming to see us. Turned out that the people responsible for the ASBO conditions didn't know the above and hadn't consulted. And this sort of thing is happening all over the place.