ASBOs fail to impact on lives in vulnerable communities

THERE is something overwhelmingly wrong about the thought of elderly people living alone, being too scared to tell gardaí or local authorities about their daily lives of fear.

However, councillors in most large local authority housing estates will tell you that this fear and powerlessness is one of the most common issues when meeting their constituents. They tell you about the partying seven nights a week, about the children wandering out on the green in the early hours of the morning and the ever-present terror that some reveller will decide to put a stone through your window or attack your home.

These same councillors will tell you that gardaí do their best to apprehend people when the law allows them to and local authorities also try to stop this assault on communities but know that, when the fight hits the court, that they will often lose out.

ASBOS were supposed to curb anti-social behaviour by youngsters and, after years of denying its limitations, there’s finally some admittance in government circles that it isn’t impacting on lives in this country’s problem estates.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has asked the Garda Commissioner for a review of the system “to see whether any improvements can be made” while simultaneously saying the system isn’t a “failure”. Just six ASBOs have been issued in two years.

Labour justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte says, “given the scale of anti-social behaviour in so many of our communities, to talk about three civil orders and three behaviour orders is absurd”.

The Department of the Environment says that the Housing Amendment Act, published earlier this year, will bring stronger might, improving links between local authorities, housing bodies and the Garda.

The feeling on the ground is that those links were always in place, if only an informal basis, but that people have given up hope of their politicians defending them. They’re too busy rooting for the bankers.