Disciplining women: gender, silence and anti-social behaviour

Abstract

The policy and media concern with anti-social behaviour (ASB) is well-documented. There has also been a growing body of research into the use and effects of instruments to tackle ASB – notably the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (Squires, 2008). Within both the official and the academic discourses there has, however, generally been a failure to consider the importance and consequence of gender. In the first section of this article, we draw on empirical findings from a three year evaluation of six Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) which were pioneering a ‘new’ form of ASB intervention by providing families at risk of eviction with intensive support to help them address behavioural and other problems to explore how ASB is experienced by lone parent women at risk of losing their homes (Nixon et al., 2006; Nixon and Parr, 2008). By way of contrast in the second part of the article we focus on 14 Court of Appeal ASB judgements made between 2001 and 2007 highlighting the ways in which judges (almost always male) apportion culpability and responsibility.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caroline Hunter

is Professor at the York Law School, University of York

Judy Nixon

is a Principal Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University and course leader of a Postgraduate Certificate in Anti-Social Behaviour Studies