Don't Be Un-Mutual

Julian Sanchez | February 9, 2005

The most recent Economist has a piece on the Orwellian-sounding "Anti-Social Behavior Orders" (subscribers) used by police to slap restrictions (on pain of jail-time) on folks who ignore their neighbors. The article informs us that "one man was sentenced to four months in prison for howling like a werewolf." Sold on the grounds that police would, of course, deploy them with restraint and careful judgment, more than a thousand were issued in the first half of 2004 alone. Fewer than one in 70 ASBO applications are rejected. Worse, "ASBOs allow the police to bypass the normal procedures of criminal justice when they suspect somebody of serious criminal activity but can't prove it."

Comments

Brian Carnell|2.9.05 @ 3:34PM|#

So the Brit scan stop people from howling like werewolves, but they still don't have a clue how to get a handle on animal rights terrorism. Sounds like a certain Department of Homeland Security....

|2.9.05 @ 3:36PM|#

Are you sentenced to "Instant Social Conversion" if you are convicted of being "unmutual" or "disharmonious"?

http://www.danger-man.co.uk/prisoner/changeofmind.htm

"I will not be pushed, stamped, filed, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!" -The Prisoner

|2.9.05 @ 3:37PM|#

How do they know what werewolves sound like? John Landis movies?

|2.9.05 @ 3:38PM|#

I read about these elsewhere (can't recall). They're a popular non-solution for families who can't be bothered to monitor their kids, and whose thuggish, mouth-breathing hellspawn are flushing the quality of life in British neighborhoods down the toilet, whether through vandalism, theft, violence, nuisance, gang activity, or a combination thereof.

Here's a situation where an ounce of free-market prevention is worth a pound of cure, IMO. Landlords or neighborhood associations should be permitted to reject home sales or rentals to families with histories of troublemaking, and similarly, allowed to eject tenants swiftly who can't or won't control their badass kids.

Once people realize they could really, honestly, yes-indeedy get kicked to the curb if they don't take responsibility for their own or their wards' behavior, I'll bet they'd make much more sincere attempts to straighten up and fly right.

But monkeys might as well fly out me arse; we're talking about the nanny state to end all nanny states, after all.

|2.9.05 @ 3:41PM|#

Doubleplus good, brother Sanchez.

|2.9.05 @ 3:46PM|#

How do they know what werewolves sound like? John Landis movies?

I have to second this... How do you howl like a mythical creature? And how does anyone know you are doing it?

It's like humming dirty songs.....

Jeff|2.9.05 @ 3:55PM|#

Howling like a werewolf sounds more like disturbing the peace. Actually ignoring your neighbors (which we in New England have down to an art form) seems somewhat tougher to enforce.
Not saying "hello" cannot be more harmful than, say, insulting them, which is not a crime in the U.K.
Then again, British insults are usually limited to "wanker" and "sotty knob," so perhaps the analogy is flawed.

|2.9.05 @ 3:56PM|#

Just one more example of how the Brits keep finding new ways to fuse the worst elements of the American and European modes of governance. In this case, the fusion of American heavy-handed law enforcement with European bureaucratic nannyism. Third Way indeed.

|2.9.05 @ 4:32PM|#

About what I'd expect from a country that prosecutes people who try to defend themselves from muggers and burglers as having violated the "rights" of the criminal.

|2.9.05 @ 4:34PM|#

Is this legislation going to ruin flirting as we know it? I for one, as a woman and a Seinfeld fan, know that women love "the snub". If you take that away from men, they will be seeing a lot more rejections....nothing worse than a forthright, direct greeting from a potential male partner. It's all part of the game.
And this ruling will come down hard on catty women, too, who like to snub each other. I can just see a woman calling the cops on "that bitch" who doesn't say hi in passing.

|2.9.05 @ 7:25PM|#

(looks away, staring into the distance)

Kevin Carson|2.10.05 @ 12:24AM|#

This becomes even more ridiculous in light of Gene Callahan's beating.

|2.10.05 @ 10:14AM|#

That werewolf at Trader Vic's better watch himself...