In order to find out how different community groups and victims felt about the effectiveness of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), seven focus groups were conducted in communities that had been affected by high levels of anti-social behaviour and where ASBOs had been used. One of the focus groups was not directly related to specific ASBO cases, but was included in the survey to provide some insight into the attitudes of residents towards ASBOs in locations not directly affected by anti-social behaviour. Fourteen in-depth interviews with victims and complainants were also carried out. Each victim interview directly corresponds to one or more of the 38 ASBO cases.

Community consultation and reporting

As noted above, most of the partnerships made an effort to elicit the views of local residents and to engage them in addressing anti-social behaviour. The level of consultation varied considerably among the boroughs surveyed, with some establishing local community forums across the borough, while in other boroughs the level of involvement was very limited. It was also the case, as we have seen, that practitioners were in a number of cases generally dismissive of the apparently trivial and minor incidents they wanted controlled. Generally, local residents were seen by practitioners as being relatively intolerant, with a tendency to focus on relatively ‘trivial’ incidents

One strategy that some councils and Borough Command Units (BCUs) have introduced is dedicated telephone lines for people to report incidents of anti-social behaviour. The introduction of these telephone lines is often accompanied by a leafleting of residents to inform them of their existence and to encourage their use. However, there was found to be a discrepancy between the perception of the role of these dedicated telephone lines between practitioners and the public. Whereas the public appear to believe that when they report an incident it will generate a response and that something will be done about it, for the council the reports on these lines are used mainly as an intelligence-gathering exercise and as a way of monitoring incidents. There is normally no intention of providing an identifiable response to any report or even a series of reports. Residents find these so-called ‘hot lines’frustrating and ineffective.