Anti-social behaviour has a past, even, as we have argued, a ‘secret history’ (Squires and Stephen, 2005), but does it have a future beyond the smoke-and-mirrors symbolism alluded to above? Is our recent and relatively sudden adoption of the language of anti-social behaviour (ASB) a temporary aberration, or does it imply something about the particular preoccupations of the British regarding the behaviour of (in particular) lower-class youth? Has ‘law and order’ and ASB management, above all, become our ‘comfort blanket’ in the face of the discomforting social changes of late-modern globalisation? In other words, has anti-social behaviour become the ‘signal crime’ or signal disorder of late modernity (Innes, 2004)? And is ASB here to stay, by virtue of its providing authorities with just too useful a definition of selective and flexible delinquency and too many and infinitely variable levels of precautionary and pre-emptive intervention and bespoke injunctive criminalisation? The apparatus of ASB management and the ASBO itself are, on this score, just too useful to be dismantled, notwithstanding (indeed more likely because of) their fundamental transformation of the operating philosophy of British criminal law and procedure.

As was suggested in the introduction to this book, the broad aim behind the range of articles comprising this collection involved the attempt to reflect the full spectrum of advocacy, opinion, commentary, research evidence and findings, professional practice and development, debate, and critique surrounding anti-social behaviour – in short, everything it was possible to say about ASB management and ‘the ASBO’, in particular. The book aimed to embrace the broad debate about the contemporary significance of anti-social behaviour: what could, or should, be done about it and, indeed, what was being done about it and, not least, how effective this was proving to be.

The point has been made in the introduction, and by a number of commentators in the book, about the fast-moving field of law and order politics in the UK. This has been especially noticeable with regard to ASB policy, an issue on which Tony Blair placed so much emphasis. Now, with the departure of Mr Blair from 10 Downing Street, it could be that the future of ASB management is ‘up for grabs’.