Anti-Social Behaviour & Children

When children become involved in anti-social behaviour, it is often as a result of either bad parenting and/or they have simply ‘got in’ with the wrong crowd. Peer pressure can be extremely powerful when you’re young and, even though children may well have been brought up to hold decent values and to understand the concept of respect, they can still get into trouble and so blame cannot always be laid on the parents.

Nevertheless, parents themselves have a duty to try to ensure that their child is not engaging in activities deemed to be anti-social in nature or committing criminal offences.

Common Problems

Anti-social behaviour by children can manifest itself in a variety of ways but some of the more common problems include:

• Noise nuisance
• Verbal abuse, harassment and threatening behaviour
• Assault
• Criminal damage to shops, cars and property
• Throwing missiles
• Joyriding
• Vandalism and graffiti
• Underage drinking or drug abuse

Measures To Tackle Anti-Social Behaviour In Children

Although an individual member of the public cannot apply for the likes of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO), the police, local authorities and registered landlords can and there are also other legal measures which the relevant authorities can take. Here is a breakdown of what each course of action means.

Group Dispersal Orders

Police and local community support officers can break up a gathering of youths who might be harassing other members of the local community. They can be banned from revisiting a particular area for up to 24 hours and, if they fail to move on or return within that timescale, they can be issued with a fixed penalty notice, i.e. be fined.

In conjunction with the local authority, the police can also make certain areas out of bounds for specific groups of people by creating designated ‘no-go zones’. Here, the police have the power to take home any unsupervised children seen in the zone after 9pm.

Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC)

This is a voluntary agreement which is drawn up between somebody who has been involved in anti-social behaviour and the local authority or police. In signing the contract, the offender has made a commitment not to continue with any further instances of such behaviour and, if they break this contract, they can then be served with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order.

Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO)

This will usually be issued if either a child has broken an ABC or where their behaviour is causing alarm or distress to others. It prevents the offender from engaging in specific anti-social activities and/or going to certain area or associating with certain named people. An ASBO can be issued to a child as young as 10 and they can last for a minimum of 2 years. You can also be arrested if you break an ASBO.

Holding Parents To Account

Although some instances of a child’s anti-social behaviour will be as a result of peer pressure, many problems arise due to bad parenting or neglect of children yet there are measures which can be put in place to make parents more responsible and accountable for the behaviour of their children. These include:

Parenting contracts – which are voluntary agreements drawn up between the likes of schools or a local authority’s youth offending team with parents of the child in question. They are for the likes of parents whose child has been playing truant or has been expelled from school and are aimed at improving the child’s behaviour

Parenting orders – these are issued by the court and can be used when a child has either been already convicted of a crime or when they have engaged in anti-social behaviour. They involve parents attending a course aimed at offering them guidance and advice for responsible parenting and making sure that their child goes to school, keeps away from places they are not permitted to go unsupervised and/or for making sure that their child is at home by a particular time. They can be issued for up to a period of 12 months

Penalty notices - schools, the police and local authorities can issue fines to the parents of a child who is playing truant. And if the parents fail to pay the fine, they can be prosecuted.

For the most part, tackling problems associated with children and anti-social behaviour is a joint effort where parents, schools, local authorities and the police all need to work together with children to educate them about moral values and respect both for themselves and for others.

When that is achieved, anti-social behaviour by children inevitably tails off and, if it doesn’t, then some of the measures above and further measures are in place to ensure that the behaviour of a child is not allowed to blight the whole community.