Antisocial Behaviour – the scourge of communities

In my old council job, I knocked on thousands of doors and spoke to thousands of residents. I asked what the police and council should prioritise in their neighbourhood in terms of crime. The top three answers, regardless of where we were in Manchester, were always dog fouling, litter and unruly young people. No one ever mentioned violence, rape or bank robbery – even though these are serious crimes. It was always antisocial behaviour (ASB) they wanted us to tackle. Why? These types of issues happen daily, never stop, and over time destroy the quality of life for residents in these neighbourhoods.

I am a jack-of-all-trades. I know a little about many topics. But there is only one field of discipline where I would dare claim the title of expert - Youth Related Antisocial Behaviour Reduction. I have two decades of experience working front line in the toughest neighbourhoods of Greater Manchester. I have created award-winning projects that have reduced ASB and improved communities. I have advised governments and Prime Ministers. And ultimately, I was awarded an MBE by our late Queen for this work.

Have you heard of the Broken Window Effect? This is a theory that states if a smashed window is left unrepaired on a street, then people notice and subconsciously presume that no one cares about the area. This leads to low-level ASB which then increases to high levels over time, and eventually, manifests into outright criminality. Slums are not built, they are created over time by apathy, incompetence and cowardice. If the broken window had been fixed the same day, or the graffiti had been washed away the same week, then the slum may never have appeared.

I have a simple strategy to combat youth-related ASB, I call it my Triple Track Approach: prevention, early intervention, and enforcement.

Prevention: This is about preventing problems from ever happening which is the best outcome for everyone. Prevention is cheaper, quicker and easier than having to wait until a crime happens to then take action. It encompasses high visibility policing, CCTV, advertising arrests and prosecutions, ensuring people know the rules and that they will be enforced, supporting failing parents, and creating a sense of community where residents enforce social norms.

I created a project called Crime Doesn’t Pay which I ran many times. It was a full-day project for young people where we took them through the criminal justice process from arrest to court, to prison. We did half the day in the police museum in Manchester city centre which has an old magistrates court upstairs and jail cells below. I would assign different roles to the kids as they played out being a judge, prison guard, criminal etc. We changed the opinion of many young people about the police with this project as they realised why laws are important.

Early Intervention: This is about 'nipping things in the bud' and not allowing small issues to continue or escalate. Every serious criminal started small and got away with most of it – this needs to change. A big part of this work is involving parents for I do not want government to replace failing parents, but to make them better parents.

I spent several years as a Youth Intervention Officer for Manchester Council. I was the link between the police and parents of kids who were beginning to cross the line. The police would report to me poor behaviour from a specific young person and I would arrange a friendly chat with parents. My job was to give these parents the information they needed to be better parents by knowing what their child was up to outside of the home. The vast majority of parents thanked me for the information and sorted out their children when they got home. The way it should be.

Enforcement: If the first two steps have failed, then we must enforce the law. If we do not then we send the wrong signal to offenders and the community. Arresting and prosecuting someone for breaking a window gives the community reassurance that crime will be tackled and it educates the perpetrator that their actions will not be tolerated.

I have arranged for young people to be arrested when I felt they had crossed the line and were going to ruin their lives. I have given evidence in court against young people I have worked with for they needed to be punished in the hope it would push them back on the right path. We do no favours to the next generation by allowing them to think they are untouchable. Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Where have we gone wrong in dealing with ASB and crime over the last 50 years? The answer is simple. We failed to do the three points above. We do not prevent crime for it is too difficult to prove it worked. We do not intervene early because it costs too much money and the benefits are years away. We do not enforce because we think criminals are also victims and it would be unfair to punish them for something that is not their fault. I have no time for pink and fluffy nonsense.

Middle-class, university-educated civil servants do not understand dysfunctional human behaviour for they have never lived in failing neighbourhoods or socialised with the violent. So they seek to be kind, compassionate and tolerant as if this is a magic spell against intergenerational dysfunctionality. It is a type of bigotry of low expectations. They think poor people are lesser and should not be judged by the same standards as decent folk – like them.

Let me tell you about a woman I knew in East Manchester and an incident that ruined her life. One Friday evening a brick shot through her living room window – no one was hurt. Local kids told me it was the group of youths who drank alcohol in the park. This incident badly affected the woman and she became very nervous and afraid to leave her home. This put a strain on her marriage and her employment. Within the year she lost her job for poor attendance, which put extra financial pressure on the household. Her marriage crumbled and her husband moved out. Her mortgage went into arrears and eventually, the bank sought repossession. Within two years, she lost her job, her husband and her home. Why? Some drunk kids thought it would be funny to throw a brick through her window as a dare.

If we had intervened with these kids sitting in the park drinking alcohol we may have stopped the chain of events that destroyed a life. I have dozens of stories like this. This is why tackling ASB is important.

If elected Mayor of Greater Manchester next year, I will be implementing my three-point strategy within the police to combat antisocial behaviour and improve the quality of life of everyone in the region. You will not hear a police officer say a specific incident is too low level for their involvement, or that a particular officer did not join the police to tackle kids in the park. I have heard police officers use both of these excuses to not do their publicly funded job – these excuses end on day one.

I will move police resources away from monitoring social media for hurty words and even from some serious crime investigations. Tackling ASB will be one of the priorities for Greater Manchester Police and I will accept that some other crimes may increase as a consequence. I can live with that until our neighbourhoods are better places to live and the quality of life of residents improves.

I will work for the people and they tell me daily what they want as priorities. I will move us away from the modern idea of managing crime as we do now, and get back to eradicating it at source.

Do not be fooled that poverty is at the root of criminality for it is not. Criminals are the cause of crime and we must hammer them. My motto has always been: "It is quicker, simpler and cheaper to change the life of an antisocial 12-year-old, rather than wait until they are 19 years old and entrenched in dysfunctionality and criminality."

#NickBuckley4Mayor