Anti-Social Behaviour Orders were introduced as a last-resort deterrence to curb loutish behaviour in neighbourhoods. But do they have any real substance or are they just a way of making crime figures look good? JIM GREENHALF reports.

Just as rats are said to develop immunity to substances intended to kill them, young trouble-makers reportedly glory in the measures intended to curb their behaviour.

Those who glory in ignoring the unwritten rules of civilised behaviour are likely to regard special measures taken against them not as shaming but as a vindication.

This is one of the findings of a year-long study by the Youth Justice Board which looked at Anti-Social Behaviour Orders given to under-18s between January, 2004, and January, 2005, in ten areas of England and Wales.

Of 137 teenagers studied about half - 67 - had breached their ASBO at least once, 42 more than once and six on at least half-a-dozen occasions each.

"A considerable number of respondents alluded to the potential for the order to become glamorous," the report stated.

One district judge, unnamed, commented: "There are quite a lot of people breaching orders and not a lot happening to them when they do. You would increase the prison population enormously if we enforced ASBOs fully."

Why should anyone be surprised? Yobs who so readily embrace the gangsta' culture - they like terrorising people by playing loud, threatening music - want to be feared because fear begets respect and among their peer groups street credibility.

In France at the moment the very structure of the state is being challenged by Molotov-lobbing malcontents from poor suburbs. Police officers, postmen and fire-fighters are reportedly under sustained attack.

In Bradford emergency vehicles, trains and buses have been targeted for attack, but nothing like on the same scale in France.

There is a feeling that yobs in this country know that no-one is going to give them a good hiding or do anything to offend their human rights. Parents are deemed to be either scared or indifferent to instil discipline into their unruly offspring, many of whom do drugs of one kind or another, so the problem spills out into society at large.

The Prime Minister picked up on the issue, declaring that yobs terrorising neighbourhoods, and neighbours from hell, would no longer be tolerated. Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Acceptable Behaviour Contracts were introduced to give perpetrators a second chance, a chance to change their behaviour.

Earlier this year Alisha Kaye, who specialises in prosecuting anti-social offences for the Crown Prosecution Service in West Yorkshire, told the T&A that the battery of measures brought in to combat anti-social behaviour do carry a serious sanction.

"Sentences are not always custodial. But if people want to go on committing low-level crime they are going to get a more substantial sentence. They can get five years at Crown Court," she said.

But that was before the news that Britain's prisons are full. ASBOs, ABCs, exclusion zones appear to the public to be the equivalent of a good telling off - certainly not a slap across the wrist, which would surely result in an accusation of police brutality, racism, or both.

Former Conservative Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw famously tried to apply the "short, sharp shock" treatment to young criminals. Although boot camps have been found to work - witness all the television programmes in recent years - their success depends on a mixture of tough love with well defined punishments for back-sliders.

How times change. The current Conservative Party leader David Cameron wants us to show more understanding of young people's needs and wants.

Wibsey Labour councillor Ralph Berry, a former probation worker with 11 years' experience, said: "I have known youths who wanted to go to prison because their mates had been, so the badge of honour syndrome is a reality.

"A careful and targeted use of ASBOs is useful; but they are not a single wicket. We need more experienced outreach workers who are prepared to leave the comfort zone and go out to troubled areas.

"There is an organisation called Prism in Girlington that is doing just this. It's a not-for-profit company run by Paul Craven and they work with kids who have been excluded from school in an area of high tension. We need to support this kind of work because they (Prism) are prepared to get into the difficult stuff.

"We need Parenting Orders too, working with families that are having problems with their children; helping parents to take responsibility where they don't take responsibility.

"I get the feeling that ASBOs have been used in place of other kinds of approach; but I don't think this is the case in Bradford."

Evidently the Government shares Councillor Berry's conviction that the district needs all the help it can get for it has chosen Bradford to be a priority Respect Action Area.

Officially, this means cutting down anti-social behaviour in neighbourhoods including the worst anti-social families and households.

Either the Government is impressed by the kind of initiatives already being taken, as outlined by Ralph Berry, or it means that more urgent action needs to be taken.

The Government expects good behaviour among young people to be promoted and bad behaviour challenged. It expects to see an improvement in attendance and behaviour at school. It expects support for parents and anti-social families. And it wants the idea of respect to be promoted in neighbourhoods.

Conservative councillor Kris Hopkins, leader of Bradford Council, said: "The Respect Action Area agenda is about partners and communities working together to build a respectful society where anti-social behaviour is prevented or tackled effectively.

"We have already done a lot to improve anti-social behaviour but we want to go further by improving the services we deliver and showing that we will not tolerate behaviour that ruins everyone else's quality of life."

Our system veers towards corrective rehabilitation rather than retributive punishment; but this only works if yobs and their parents have some residual respect for the system.

At the heart of the criminal justice system is the understanding that in exchange for aggrieved citizens not seeking vengeance the law will act on their behalf. Too often, however, victims find themselves accused of being culprits.