Banned from Camden

When I ‘stumbled’ across John in the Probation Office waiting room with his outreach worker, I remembered thinking, against a tight deadline, how I might have approached a considered assessment of this client. An earlier assessment had concluded that:

John had been allocated to me initially for preparation of a Crown Court pre-sentence report. He was awaiting sentence for breaking into his former demoted flat, having recently been rehoused after a lengthy period as a street homeless person in a resettlement hostel. While I pored over the paperwork before me, I noticed that he was also in breach of an ASBO (imposed by Camden Council – widely acknowledged as London's ASBO champion – for eight years) for persistent begging while sleeping rough. It was accepted by all parties that when he attempted to break into his former flat he was ‘out of it’ due to a toxic combination of drink and drugs and had no proper recollection of how the offence might have occurred. When I enquired about the terms of the ASBO, he was totally vague and could only utter that he thought he was banned from entering the borough. Here was a first problem: the hostel in which he had been placed was only a short walk from the borough boundary. Furthermore the ‘Camden ban’ would actually prevent him from accessing some of the street-level services that might well have offered him targeted support.

I asked him whether he was concerned about the consequences of breaching his order or whether he viewed the ASBO as a deterrent. The Magistrates’ Association recommended that the starting point for such breaches is custody. Unlike, according to tabloid media headlines, some of his younger counterparts, John did not appear to view his ASBO as a ‘badge of honour’ or ‘street diploma’.