Clause 19 - Anti-social behaviour injunctions
Police and Justice Bill
3:00 pm
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
The purpose of the probing amendments is to test the appropriateness of clause 19’s wording. It is good for those with a liberal conscience or liberal tendencies to beware of crimes without victims. I understand the purpose of some of the wording, particularly in subsection (4), which would protect the identity of particular individuals. In my constituency, quite a large number of local people were victimising one family, and the conflict had racist elements. It would have been extremely counterproductive for that family to be named. The amendments would not make that impossible, because they are carefully framed.
The amendments would remove the ability of antisocial behaviour injunctions to refer to “persons generally”, which we believe is too broad, but would leave the ability to name individuals if appropriate and to describe people, as in subsection (4)(b), which refers to
“persons of a description specified in the injunction”.
It would still be possible to protect the identity of local residents and of individuals or families.
It is risky to allow injunctions for behaviour that an authority believes to be antisocial, but for which no evidence has been received. In other words, someone could effectively be found guilty of a crime with no victims. On one occasion when I was canvassing locally, I was told by neighbourhood people about antisocial behaviour. The antisocial behaviour that they were referring to was local kids playing football on the green space nearby. I was as sympathetic as I could be, but I could not see what possible harm there was in such behaviour.
By allowing that to be regarded as antisocial behaviour, even though no one was prepared to come forward to put their name to a complaint, the Bill would allow the risk that those children might be unfairly treated under an injunction for doing something that really offended no one and caused no real harm. The amendments would remove the references to “persons generally”, but would leave the reference either to specific people or to people by description.