Fun Stuff > CHATTER
ASBO = AAAAAAGH
Vendetagainst:
no, I get it, that sorta shit's happened to me a couple of times too. Plus we're talking about politics, which pisses everybody off.
a pack of wolves:
--- Quote from: tommydski on 26 Jul 2008, 19:01 ---Without knowing the specifics of each case, we're making assumptions that their specific misdemeanours were mild. I honestly don't believe there are magistrates out there with hard-ons for ASBOs. I'm betting if we had a single conversation with any of the people involved in these ASBOs, we'd learn an awful lot about why they were issued. It's only an abuse of power if, y'know, there's been an abuse of power. I'm not comfortable with casting such aspersions from one inevitably biased source.
--- End quote ---
I'm not suggesting the behaviour that led to any of these ASBOs was mild (although in many cases it is, non-aggressive begging for example). What I'm arguing is that the very fact that magistrates have the power to essentially invent new criminal offences as they see fit and apply them to members of the public without having to keep to the standards for evidence and privacy that exist for criminal offences is an abuse of power, no matter the justification. As for magistrates being keen to use ASBOs, they're encouraged to be by government policy and strong recommendation (as well as police forces and local councils being encouraged to apply for them). It's been very heavily promoted as a tactic, and very few ASBOs are indeed turned down.
--- Quote from: tommydski on 26 Jul 2008, 19:01 ---In the post I managed to delete I wrote a lot about whether or not these seemingly soft examples of ASBOs were an acceptable form of collateral damage if it allows the people who actually work day in, day out to keep the peace in a more effective and efficient manner. For all these apparently petty cases there will have been hundreds, probably thousands of ASBOs which prevented some thoroughly despicable people from sustained harassment of people who just want to live their lives and mind their own business. Personally my sympathy lies with the victims of these offenders rather than with people who repeatedly break the law in the face of several warnings. Frankly they can find a sponge and cry on it for all I care.
--- End quote ---
I should admit, I've never been a fan of accepting collateral damage, I have no moral problem with someone breaking the law when the law is unjust nor do I think increased punishment will ever reduce crime without an unacceptable level of population control. Regrettably we have already reached and long since passed an unacceptable level of population control without even the benefit of less violence, it clearly seems an ineffective tactic regardless of the moral implications. I'm not willing to allow the state the power to make things like free association of individuals in public or the freedom to walk through public spaces a crime just because of the hope it will make this country a nicer place to live. It won't, and that is too much of a loss of liberty even if it did.
JediBendu:
I may just be reiterating what someone else has said differently, but I think everybody needs to realize how different the cultures of America and Britain truly are. We have very different expectations both socially in general and when it comes to public decency. Forgive us Americans when we see an example of one of these orders that would never fly in most places in America (or really just the whole system might not fly too well in America), since it's an infringement on our constitutional rights. That's pretty much basic fact in a lot of these more ludicrous cases (or actually, if all of them are served for non-criminal or otherwise mild acts, then I would say the entire system is unconstitutional by our standards). Most Americans are taught to value their constitutional rights highly, which doesn't make us better than you at all, we just truly have a hard time imagining other systems sometimes, especially when faced with a culture like the British who are by and large considerably more polite than us rude and crude Americans.
That being said, there are methods that the American legal system uses to accomplish some of the same things as in these orders, but they require a truly criminal act to trigger them. If the young man who was prohibited from displaying his gang's name was in America, he probably would never be prohibited from displaying the name, instead, he would simply be profiled and watched by the cops. This is another issue altogether.
Some of the cases seem similar to just basic probation, but probation usually requires a truly criminal act and conviction.
Disrupting class is a matter that's entirely up to the school in question, and not any higher government. I don't believe disrupting class is a criminal act.
Spitting you can maybe make a case for, as it could potentially violate some form of public cleanliness thing, kind of like public urination or ejaculation is sort of frowned upon. But, it's made out in this instance to be more of a "it's unbecoming and not polite." Which it may or may not be.
Dimmukane:
This is an example of asinine policing in the States. I'm not going to argue over the rights of citizens on either side of the Atlantic, because every now and then their rights are infringed upon without reasonable cause anyway. This is not the fault of the laws passed, but rather the people who misinterpret them and/or try to use them to their advantage. I like to think that these kinds of arrests are a result of those people who either work for the law and don't understand it, or see the law as a loophole to manipulate.
I'm fairly sure that no one really foresaw this stuff happening when they wrote these laws, I can only hope it works itself out.
JediBendu:
I definitely agree that there's ridiculous rulings here in America as well, but they usually are rooted in some form of bastardization of an actual punishable law (like, in the case of that child, assault) while these ASBOs are by definition simply punishment for "anti-social behavior". Essentially what I'm saying is that the concept of ASBOs is just a concept that is slightly inconceivable to most Americans.
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