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4 the centre for crime and justice studies
‘Togetherness’? Tackling anti-social
behaviour through community
engagement
Kathryn Farrow and David Prior look at the relationship between
taking on ASB and promoting civil renewal.
A poor quality of life, lack of trust in the public
agencies and a frequently expressed desire to move
elsewhere, meant that there was little capacity for
initiatives which put responsibility for action onto local
citizens themselves.
A
good deal of commentary on the
Go vern ment ʼs app roa ch to ta ckli ng
anti-social behaviour has focused on the
approp riateness and effe ctiveness of spe cific
enforcement powers: ASBOs, Dispersal Orders,
closure of crack houses and so on (see, for example,
Burney 2005). Yet a major part of government
strategy looks to local communities to play an active
role in reducing anti-social behaviour – the idea of
community engagement as a means of achieving
policy goals not only runs through much Ministerial
discourse, it underpins the ʻTogetherʼ campaign
formerly run by the Home Ofce, now transferred
to the new Department of Communities and Local
Government, which is supporting initiatives across
the country (www.together.gov.uk).
In line with the principles of civil renewal, the
promotion of community engagement in strategies
to reduce crime and disorder is aimed at creating a
new relationship between citizens, communities and
the agencies of crime control, based on trust and
public condence (Prior 2005). The claim is that this
will lead to less crime and anti-social behaviour and
stronger, more cohesive communities.
As part of the Civil Renewal Research Programme
funded by the Home Ofce, we set out to test, in a
very preliminary way, the relationship between
initiatives addressing anti-social behaviour and the
potential for civil renewal in a large urban district,
where the development of multi-agency responses
to anti-social behaviour was being prioritised.
The district, ʻGreenhillʼ, is part of a much larger
metropolitan area, has a population of 107,000,
46 per cent of whom are from minority ethnic
communities (mainly South Asian Muslim), and
has very high levels of multiple deprivation.
We organised discussion groups, interviewed
people and attended meetings in three separate
neighbourhoods in different parts of Greenhill.
Each of these was facing specic local problems
involving anti-social behaviour and, in each,
different kinds of initiatives were being developed
to tackle them. Thus, in the rst neighbourhood,
ofcially perceived as the ʻworstʼ in terms of levels
of crime and anti-social behaviour, a neighbourhood
safety project based on principles of community
participation was in place, operating alongside fairly
intensive police interventions deploying the range of
ASB powers. In the second, a residents group had
been established and was developing a partnership
approach with local agencies (local authority, police,
voluntary organisations), in which a dedicated
neighbourhood police ofcer and a voluntary sector
community worker were key players. In the third, a
ʻNeighbourhood Forumʼ was taking a lead role in
community development activities; this comprised
local residents and had ofcial status in the local
authorityʼs decision making process.
What, then, did we learn about community
engagement at neighbourhood level? (For a fuller
discussion of the research ndings, see Prior, Farrow,
Spalek and Barnes 2006 in press.)
First, in all three, poverty and deprivation
combined with a history of under-investment by
public and private sectors to create a very difcult
environment for community engagement. A poor
quality of life, lack of trust in the public agencies
and a frequently expressed desire to move elsewhere,
meant that there was little capacity for initiatives
which put responsibility for action onto local citizens
themselves. It generated, among the majority, a
culture of pessimism which led people to doubt that
anything could change for the better. It also raised,
for us, the question whether ʻtackling anti-social
behaviourʼ should really be the major priority for
public policy in the area.
Second, where indications of progress did exist,
they were fragile and tended to involve a very small
number of people. Generally, social networks were
weak and there was little experience of collective
action. In the neighbourhood where most progress
had been made, this was due to the efforts of two
cjm no. 64 Summer 2006 5
or three residents from the Neighbourhood Forum
who had simply set out to organise small-scale
activities for local young people and had gradually
begun to gain the trust and support both of the young
people and their parents. This had been done largely
independently of the public agencies, albeit it with
their recognition and support. By contrast, in the
neighbourhood where an ʻofcialʼ neighbourhood
safety project had been introduced, involvement by
residents was minimal to the point of raising doubts
about the projectʼs continuing viability.
Third, there were profound differences regarding
ways of responding to the perceived anti-social
behaviour of young people, in particular between
advocates of enforcement and proponents of long
term preventive work. In the neighbourhood with the
emerging residents group and some partnership action
with local service deliverers, we found evidence of
substantial distrust between adult residents and young
people in the area; and further distrust from the young
people in the police, who (with the exception of the
one Neighbourhood Police Officer) they saw as
harassing and victimizing them. In areas such as
this, we believe there is a risk of young people, as a
social group, being made to feel subject to controls
that exclude them from ordinary, everyday social life,
thereby exacerbating existing feelings of alienation
and detachment (Squires and Stephen 2005).
Fourth, the whole issue of trust and distrust
appeared hugely signicant, and operated across
numerous dimensions: between citizens and public
agencies; between young and old; between different
ethnic groups; and simply between individual
neighbours. Nearly all our respondents viewed trust
as a vital ingredient in community engagement,
but how do you build trust? At a basic level, our
evidence suggests it takes both time and some sort of
shared or community focused activity, for example,
developing an Asian girls group, organising day
trips for children and parents, ʻofcialsʼ becoming
part of local neighbourhood life, such as community
caretakers or Neighbourhood Police Ofcers. There
seemed little doubt that heavy-handed ʻenforcementʼ
of anti-social behaviour powers, whilst welcomed by
residents on occasions, was destructive of trust in the
longer term.
Fifth, in Greenhill, as elsewhere, the challenge
of engaging the South Asian Muslim communities
faced both the legacy of persistently high levels of
deprivation and the resulting frustration increasingly
voiced by second or third generation British Asian
citizens (McGhee 2005). There is a complex issue
here concerning the strong bonding relationships
within these communities but a relative lack of
connection to the formal agencies of governance.
A number of respondents suggested that the
conventional mechanisms of participation were
generally unsuccessful with these Asian Muslim
communities (but then they were not noticeably
successful with the white communities either).
Heightened tensions arising from the association
of terrorism with these communities and their
experiences of increasing Islamophobia in Britain
made the whole process of engagement in civil and
political life extremely difcult.
Sixth, some public policies had themselves
impacted negatively on community capacity, for
example, the design of housing estates that offered
few shared public resources, housing policies
that resettled people from other areas with little
attention to potential barriers to their integration,
and initiatives with short-term funding that delivered
very little lasting change. This left a legacy of
pessimism and distrust in the willingness and ability
of public agencies to act in the best interests of local
neighbourhoods.
What is the way forward? Our research suggested
that ʻcapacity buildingʼ must be a core objective but
that for it to be successful a commitment to long-term
developmental work is required – work that would
take place in very localised contexts and would
gradually construct the kinds of relationships of trust
and mutuality between fellow community members
that could support a capacity for engagement.
There is a need to overcome bureaucratic service
delivery and attitudes which suggested a view
of residents as ʻproblemsʼ rather than citizens.
Are local service providers able to work with
residents in ways that concede power without being
threatened by local agendas and volunteer activists?
We concluded that not only are there no quick
or easy answers to the question of how to engage
local communities, but that the way forward must
be gradually negotiated and constructed as a series
of specic localised strategies to t the needs and
characteristics of individual neighbourhoods. Trust
and engagement at neighbourhood level cannot be
created by a single generalised or uniformly applied
strategy.
Kathryn Farrow is Lecturer in Community Justice
and David Pri or is Senior Rese arch Fel low,
Institute of Applied Social Studies, University of
Birmingham.
References
Burney, E. (2005) Making People Behave: Anti-social
Behaviour, Politics and Policy, Cullompton: Willan
Publishing.
McGhee, D. (2005) Intolerant Britain? Hate, Citizenship
and Difference, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Prior, D. (2005) ʻCivil Renewal and Community Safety:
Virtuous Policy Spiral or Dynamic of Exclusion?ʼ Social
Policy and Society 4(4): 1-11.
Prior, D., Farrow, K., Spalek, B. and Barnes, M. (2006
in press) ʻCan Anti-social Behaviour Interventions Help
Contribute to Civil Renewal?ʼ in T. Brennan, P. John and
G. Stoker (eds) Re-energising Citizenship: Strategies for
Civil Renewal, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Squires, P. and Stephen, D. E. (2005) Rougher Justice:
Anti-social Behaviour and Young People, Cullompton:
Willan Publishing.
www.together.gov.uk Together: Tackling anti-social
behaviour. Accessed 24 May 2006.
