the kids are alright · 2009-03-01 19:21
If you’re observant, in central London, you may have seen this notice casually cable-tied to a lamppost. From afar, it looks like a council planning application, or parking bay suspension. It’s actually notifying you that you’re now subject to an anti-social behaviour order, and the Police (and the not-really-Police Community Support Officers) have special powers to remove you from this area if they feel like it. These dispersal areas cover large swathes of London, and other cities in England. There are now over 1000 such areas.
It’s ambiguously worded, but it institutes law that in other words may not seem so palatable. There’s a curfew for unsupervised under-16s, from 9pm to 6am. Any group of 2 or more people can be broken up and/or that the member of the group have to leave the designated area (if they do not live there). Crucially, police do not have to see actual anti-social behaviour, but a constable in uniform has reasonable grounds for believing that the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed.. On the TV series Soho Blues, officers seem to use the dispersal order on rowdy, drunk individuals rather than groups.
It can apply to protestors as much as gangs, with only peaceful pickets and pre-notified public processions (PDF).
The area of central London is pretty huge, and arbitrary. There are only a few of these dispersal notices around – one at each corner of the boundary line – not even one at every entry point to the area. I think there should be a physical line around the area, maybe like the marking of the eruv with poles and wire. Will areas just outside the zone become psychogeographically tarnished, with rallies and protest, groups of kids, and the Police throwing out all the anti-socials from within the area? As Paul mentioned from The Ghost Map, Regent Street was designed to keep the bawdy in Soho and out of Mayfair.
I don’t believe in changing laws depending on where you are, or who you are, and I also believe that you have to commit an illegal act to be punished. There don’t seem to be many groups protesting against dispersal orders – Liberty haven’t done much on the anti-social behaviour act recently, but did try to fight the curfew in 2005, but it seems the only change was that police can’t use force on teenagers. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Leeds Centre for Criminal Justice Studies studied the effects so far, and have found they “antagonise and alienate young people who frequently feel unfairly stigmatised for being in public places” and “generated displacement effects, shifting problems to other places, sometimes merely for the duration of the order”.
Has anyone got a comprehensive map showing all the dispersal zones, or details on where/how many people have been warned in the dispersal zones?
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The outline looks like a stylised hand flipping a bird. The coverage of the entirety of TCR probably exists as a means to disperse the V-mask wearing crowds that gather near Goodge St every other Saturday.