Introduction

Central to the public debate opened up by the contemporary sensitivity to, and seeming obsession with, anti-social behaviour among politicians, policy makers, the media and, in turn, growing numbers of the population, is why this ‘new’ social problem of anti-social behaviour (but see Ferri, 1917) has achieved such a widespread salience in the popular imagination in the last decade. Few can have failed to notice the incessant chatter about, panic over and clamour for ‘tough’ solutions to a growing array of potentially dangerous ‘anti-social outcasts’, arguably outstripping longer-established concerns over crime per se. The contemporary crusade against the anti-social in the UK is characterised by an array of representational forms, from the villains’ gallery of noisy neighbours, disrespectful youth in gangs, persistent and aggressive beggars, prostitutes and drug users to environmental signs of disorder such as the polluting acts arising from dog fouling, graffiti, abandoned vehicles and fly-tipping. It is now impossible to discuss contemporary modes of governance across the spectrum of crime control and community safety measures without reference to the threat of the anti-social.

The rhetorical power of what has been called a ‘moral authoritarian communitarian’ discourse (Hughes, 1996) is palpable in the daily diet of tabloid media and populist political representations of the ‘broken society’. In turn, it is widely speculated in critical criminological and human rights literature on the subject (including contributions to this volume) that profoundly exclusionary and damaging consequences for specific categories of ‘at risk’ populations are resulting from interventions such as the use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). Research on ASBOs and their consequences is, however, at an early stage and this suggests a certain caution over too precipitous a judgement on the government of a policy issue that is of intense concern to the general public. In this chapter, findings from research undertaken by the authors into the work of community safety managers in Wales, entailing responses to anti-social behaviour in each of the 22 community safety partnerships in this country, are used to question prevailing assumptions about the problematisation of this signal issue in popular concerns about crime and disorder.