Writing is on the wall for thugs

OVER the past four years, the Scottish Executive has put massive investment into regenerating and strengthening Scotland’s communities. We are not prepared to see this undermined by the unacceptable behaviour of an irresponsible minority.

This morning, we published a comprehensive strategy to crack down on all forms of anti-social behaviour, with the clear message that ministers are on the side of communities and on the side of every decent, law-abiding person in Scotland.

Government doesn’t create safe communities on its own. We all share that responsibility and our rights must be matched by the responsibilities we have to meet.

Anti-social behaviour makes people’s lives a misery. Every day, hundreds of Scots are subjected to unacceptable behaviour that blights their lives, undermines families, degrades their environment, drags down communities and leads to more serious crime.

In cities, towns and villages across Scotland people feel powerless to stand up to the few who cause most of the trouble. If they do take a stand, they may be threatened or feel their concerns are simply being ignored. This cannot be tolerated any longer.

That is why tackling anti-social behaviour is the Executive’s key priority. Today marks just the first-stage in a wide-ranging and ambitious action plan for the second parliament, a plan that puts our communities first.

I am clear that people should not have to put up with mindless vandalism, graffiti and litter, noisy aggressive neighbours and drunken behaviour that is intimidating and disruptive.

We must create an environment where anti-social behaviour is not tolerated and where the perpetrators of such behaviour fully understand the consequences of their actions and know that they will be dealt with speedily and firmly.

The Partnership Agreement promised legislation to tackle anti-social behaviour. Today, in Edinburgh, I launch our consultation document on the anti-social behaviour Bill and our wider strategy for Scotland. It outlines our proposed strategy for tackling unacceptable behaviour and how this will work with our other commitments such as our Action Plan on Youth Crime, community warden schemes and local regeneration programmes.

Our strategy has four key themes: protecting and empowering communities; preventing anti-social behaviour, by working with parents and families; building safe, secure and attractive communities; and effective enforcement.

WE are taking a balanced, graduated, but where necessary, tough approach. It seeks to tackle not just the effects of anti-social behaviour, but also to tackle the problems at their roots. It emphasises prevention and early intervention, while seeking to ensure that there are tough and effective sanctions for those who fail to respond.

Local people, as the victims of anti-social behaviour, must be fully involved in the solutions. Our plans encourage local councils to set up their own anti-social behaviour units and strengthen the duties on councils and the police to involve communities in preparing their strategies.

We plan to introduce community reparation orders so that those responsible for anti-social behaviour can make amends in the communities they have damaged.

The intimidation of witnesses is abhorrent and I am committed to creating a climate in which people feel confident about reporting anti-social behaviour.

We are consulting on how we can build on our existing measures such as victim support services and the court witness service and I am particularly keen to hear what additional measures could be put in place to protect and support witnesses.

Families are at the core of our communities and I would never underestimate the challenges of parenting. The majority of parents bring up decent, well-behaved youngsters.

However, there are some youngsters who persist, despite intervention, in unacceptable behaviour. Even a small number can cause havoc and distress for hundreds of local people.

This is why we want to extend Anti-Social Behaviour Orders to children aged 12 to 15. An ASBO is a civil order which makes clear to the youngster that his or her behaviour is unacceptable and will require a positive change in their behaviour. We believe ASBOs for this age group will be very effective in dealing with those who are not responding to the measures provided by the children’s hearing system.

A very small minority of parents do not, despite a raft of supportive measures, act in the best interests of their children. We plan to introduce Parenting Orders that will require these parents to undertake guidance or counselling as well as take a more active role in the supervision of their children.

BOTH Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Parenting Orders would come at the end of a long line of other measures that would first aim to help and engage youngsters and parents on a voluntary basis.

We will also extend the availability of electronic tagging for under-16s and we would wish this measure to be used - again as a last resort - on youngsters who fail to respond to other forms of intervention and who refuse to change their behaviour.

Of course, young people’s anti-social behaviour isn’t the only thing that has an adverse effect on communities. Rubbish, fly tipping, graffiti, vandalism and noise nuisance degrade communities and blight our landscape. We intend to introduce stronger penalties for fly tipping and abandoning vehicles and will consider extending to community wardens the ability to issued fixed penalty notices.

We will ban the sale of spray paint to under-16s and intend to introduce stronger powers to combat noise nuisance. We want to consider strengthening the powers of councils to deal with landlords who don’t tackle anti-social behaviour by tenants and give the police tougher powers to close licensed premises and disperse groups engaging in anti-social behaviour.

Tackling anti-social behaviour cannot be the responsibility of government alone. Scotland needs a collective response across all sectors - local councils, police, schools, businesses and ordinary people. The anti-social behaviour bill will give us the power to make a stand - together - against unacceptable behaviour and improve the quality of life for all Scots.

• Margaret Curran is Minister for Communities.