SCOTLAND'S top police officer has urged ministers to go back to the drawing board on Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos), complaining they take far too long to grant.
Ian Latimer, the new president of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, said many Asbos took months between the original complaint and the order being granted. He said the Scottish Executive needed to streamline the system to make Asbos
quicker and easier to grant.
Latimer's comments are likely to embarrass the First Minister, Jack McConnell, coming a day after he hailed a three-week roadshow to publicise the orders as "extremely successful".
The remarks from Latimer, who is Chief Constable of Northern Constabulary, will also be viewed as the police hitting back at McConnell, who in June criticised both police and councils for issuing too few Asbos.
Latimer told Scotland on Sunday: "Anti-social behaviour orders have a place. We have used them very effectively in this area. However, some of the administrative processes used to get Asbos in place are bureaucratic. They are slow.
"Some of our experiences here would lead us to believe that we need to streamline some of these processes."
He added: "We want to use Asbos where other solutions have not worked. Between the identification of the problem and finally getting it just takes too long - it stretches into weeks and months.
"Whilst there has to be fair and reasonable scrutiny, there needs to be a mechanism which allows quick decision-making. We don't see this legislation as a panacea in itself. It won't by itself solve the problem of anti-social behaviour within our communities, but it's helpful."
An Asbo is a civil order made against a person, usually by a local authority, demanding that he stops causing trouble for other members of the community. Breaching one is punishable by up to five years in jail.
Asbos were introduced in Scotland in 1998. A study published in April found that 559 have been granted by the Scottish courts since they were introduced.
But a police insider who specialises in Asbos explained: "They can take more than a year. And all that time the person you are trying to stop is making life a misery for the people around him.
"You're gathering evidence all the time, and the public are wondering what we're doing about it.
"Their confidence in us is hit, and that's a problem all round. There's even a chance that the perpetrator might move somewhere else just before you get the Asbo, and you have to start all over again."
Explaining why the process could take so long, he said: "You need to gather the evidence and jump through all the hoops, like trying mediation even when you know it won't work, because there's the worry that when you get to court the sheriff asks why you didn't try it.
"So you finally take it to court, and if it's defended it takes longer. There might be the complication of him getting legal aid; there can be court hearings. It will easily stretch to more than a year."
The authorities in North Lanarkshire are the keenest in Scotland to use Asbos to control nuisance neighbours. They have been granted 175 orders against nuisances.
Matt Costello, North Lanarkshire's principal investigating officer, said: "They can take a long time to be granted in some cases, but we are convinced they are immensely worthwhile and that they can improve communities."
Margaret Mitchell, the Scottish Tories justice spokeswoman, said: "I am still amazed that of all the people Jack McConnell chose to criticise in his last main press conference, he hit out at the police for not using Asbos - not drug dealers, bail offenders or rapists, but the police.
"We need more police on the beat much more than we need lectures from Jack McConnell."
A Scottish Executive spokesman said: "If a family or community is suffering from the effects of anti-social behaviour, clearly we want the authorities to be able to act quickly to bring them some relief.
"In the vast majority of cases this is happening. Research commissioned by the Executive showed that in 2004-5 the vast majority of full Asbos took less than three months to secure."
In June, McConnell spoke of his "absolute dismay" that only half the country's eight police forces and a quarter of the 32 local authorities were using the new powers to disperse groups of youths.
Ministers held a three-week Asbo roadshow last month to publicise the existence of the orders. More than 6,500 people visited it as it toured the country.
The full article contains 810 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
