 | | | | by Jennie Bristow |
Fixed £100 penalties will be introduced for offences of disorderly behaviour in public places. As the office party season rolls round again, we'd better all dig deep into our pockets. Are drunk people disorderly? Generally. Are they disorderly in public places? Yes, when the pubs are shut. It seems that disorderly behaviour is now to be treated with the same kind of automatic penalty as smoking on the tube or fare-dodging. But these are very different misdemeanours: it's hard to hide a smouldering fag, and you either have a train ticket or you don't. The definition of what is 'disorderly behaviour', on the other hand, is decided by the police officer in front of you - it's all in his or her mind. You'd better hope for a copper full of Christmas spirit.
| A second bill will give the police powers to shut down rowdy pubs and clubs. Shame about the quiz night, the Irish local, the hen-night stripper…and the EastEnders Queen Vic. All hail to the JD Wetherspoons' 'safe pubs' where you cannot even play music in case it destroys the art of civilised conversation. Some people do behave badly after a few pints - but the government's solution is to curb all good times 'just in case'. Another bill will introduce a ban on drinking alcohol in the street. Alcohol is legal - how can it be a crime to drink it in the street? More to the point - what is actually 'antisocial' about drunks swigging Special Brew and teenagers burping over their white cider? Surely it is only a problem when they do something disorderly - in which case they would fall foul of the fixed-penalty fine.
| The assumption behind all three bills is nothing more profound than a cliché: one thing leads to another. If you get drunk, you might, just might, do something that somebody deems 'antisocial'. Therefore, you should never get drunk. None of this has anything to do with crime (beyond the nebulous 'disorderly behaviour'). It is merely a legal enforcement of etiquette - a statute that it is criminal not to be nice.
| | The government is also to bring in all-night curfew schemes for those aged nine to 15. Its previous child curfews could only be applied to the under-10s. In mocking the fact that the child curfews have never been used, commentators have missed the point that the teen curfews are a very different beast. The child curfews were purportedly as much about protecting children as protecting society - and could anybody really claim to be terrorised by under-10s? But everybody hates teenagers: this move is about pandering to the fogeys and curtain-twitchers, by making it possible to remove Kevin from the street. Police officials have been keen to stress that curfews should not apply to all teenagers - instead, they will be used against those young people 'vulnerable' to committing crimes. Like who? Not the Blair children, presumably - only those from broken homes and the estates, the school truants and bullies. How very liberal of them.
| This Queen's Speech is cheap populism through and through, targeting all society's pet hates - from teenagers, drunks and foxhunters to benefit fraudsters, bouncers and private wheel-clamping firms. The consequence is legislation that is petty, authoritarian…and above all, antisocial.
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