Kerre Woodham: Yobs will always be with us

I bet there were hundreds of Kiwis nodding approvingly when they read about Tony Blair's latest weapon in the battle against yobbism.

Cool Britannia has become Martial Rule Britannia as Tony's come over all Lee Kuan Yew and introduced yet more measures designed to stop people behaving badly.

It was reported this week that British homeowners and renters could be sent to housing sin bins if they refuse to stop their anti-social behaviour - a generic term used to describe those who indulge in noise, visitors at all hours, littering their properties and vandalising the neighbourhood.

The respect measures were introduced by Labour in 1998 and are commonly referred to as Asbos - Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. As with most ideas, the theory is sound. It is an offence to hoick and it's an offence to graffiti the wall of a shop but, as here, the police rarely prosecute as they have bigger fish to fry.

So the Asbos allow officers to hand out instant fines - like instant parking tickets. Yobbo youths are the principle targets of the Asbos; since 1998, there have been nearly 6500 Asbos - 43 per cent of them against youths. It's a double-pronged approach - the parents of oiks are also targeted.

Tony Blair's office reckons about 50 families in each local government area are responsible for most of the anti-social behaviour, and New Zealand police officers reckon crime in this country is a family business as well.

Again, the theory behind the idea is good. Contracts awarded against parents mean that they would typically have to attend parenting classes and address their own behaviour and their responsibilities as caregivers. Failing that, parenting orders can be made by the courts with far tougher measures and sanctions that can, in extreme cases, result in entire families being packed off to residential courses.

Isn't that what we'd all like to see? Aren't we all sick of the small number of people making life miserable for the rest of us? If people won't voluntarily behave in a civilised fashion, then by God, let the forces of the state make them!

But bad neighbours have always been with us, and so have the yobs. Fifty years ago, Parliament convened a committee to undertake an investigation into the morals of New Zealand's teenagers. This was after a group of 60 or so teenagers, aged 12 to 15, had been discovered to have been participating in sexual orgies in Lower Hutt after school and at various houses in the weekends.

Lower Hutt in the 50s? Can you imagine what that would have been like? No wonder the kids went stir crazy! But the 1954 report on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents shocked, and no doubt, titillated the nation.

New Zealand has changed since the 50s, but it would be a mistake to look back and see the time as a golden era. Authority figures could get away with heinous crimes against women and children, and many of these people will never be held accountable for the horrors they perpetrated.

And while there are many who no doubt wish that the love that dare not speak its name would stop shrieking quite so loudly next to them, as Kingsley Amis (from memory) sighed in an article on gay rights, at least being born gay doesn't automatically consign a New Zealander to a double life and an early death through suicide.

However, the protection of individual rights comes at the expense of communal rights, and if we want to live in a liberal society, where there is minimal state interference on matters of morality and where the control of the church is diminished, we're going to have to take responsibility for our own communities.

Asbos are all very well and good, but who decides what's anti-social behaviour and what is not?

Look at the problems New Zealand Cricket's been having in trying to make cricket matches more family friendly. There've been complaints of over-zealous policing of crowd behaviour, culminating in the threat to evict two women whose kiss between overs was shown on the big screen. The security guards' definition of anti-social behaviour wasn't the majority's definition, so who will decide?

And who's going to enforce these orders? The staff of the welfare agencies are overworked, inexperienced and underpaid, the police have other priorities, and as we've seen with the cricket, we don't want to live in a police state.

It's up to us - you and me - to create the kind of community we want.