Meeting of the Parliament 11 June 2026 [Draft]
I thank Colin Beattie for securing this members’ business debate. I fully share his belief in the need to support young people and their families. I recognise that, even after more than 20 years of the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Act 2004, many people in our communities still feel that antisocial behaviour is a major problem, which makes it an important topic for discussion.
Given that we have had 20 years of the 2004 act being in force, we need to look again at how we understand, define and respond to antisocial behaviour and come up with some new ideas and approaches. I have a number of concerns about the way in which we often talk about antisocial behaviour. I worry about how we use the term to lump together a lot of different issues. We sometimes use it to refer to criminal behaviour, including sexual harassment and forms of violence against women and girls, but we often also use it to refer to behaviour that we just do not really like, such as young people hanging out in the streets or in parks when they have limited options for places to go.
I also worry about how accusations of antisocial behaviour can be used to demonise certain groups of people, particularly young people and communities of colour, whereas we turn a blind eye to middle-class families who use mosquito noise makers outside their homes. Even though those are actively harmful and painful to young people who are merely walking down the street, they are not necessarily considered to be antisocial.
As Colin Beattie’s motion notes, we need to think about preventing, not just responding to, the variety of behaviours that are causing harm in our society. We need to properly understand the underlying social and economic causes and consequences of harmful behaviour, how different communities are affected differently by harm and what it means for everyone in a community to feel safe and to thrive.
On the perception that antisocial behaviour is caused mostly by young people—which the motion focuses heavily on—the little data that we have tells a very different story. The most recent statistics show that two thirds of those convicted for offences relating to antisocial behaviour were over the age of 30.
The erroneous focus on young people has consequences. As the Government’s independent working group on antisocial behaviour has argued, by focusing solely on young people, we risk ignoring root causes and reinforcing harmful cycles of alienation and mistrust between generations, with continuing unhelpful stereotypes of young people having an impact on policy and decision making. The working group found that the loss of community resources, such as sports centres, swimming pools—as Dawn Black mentioned—and youth services, has a negative impact on community resilience, and that, when community resilience is low, the risk of antisocial behaviour increases. It is no coincidence that the communities that experience the most incidences of recorded antisocial behaviour are those that have been most exposed to austerity and face the highest rates of poverty and inequality.
People of colour are also often impacted unequally by attempts to tackle perceived antisocial behaviour. As I said at general question time earlier today, the desire for crackdowns on the antisocial use of e-bikes has the potential to further marginalise food delivery riders, as people of colour are overrepresented in that highly exploitative part of our labour market.
We also need to better understand how women experience antisocial behaviour. Classing the harassment that women and girls face on our streets, in our schools and on our public transport as antisocial behaviour, with a level of concern similar to that afforded to something such as graffiti, belittles our societal problem of misogyny and the deeply ingrained patterns of violence against women.
I am not denying the existence of antisocial behaviour or rejecting people’s legitimate concerns. Indeed, the communities that we, as Greens, stand up for most—those experiencing poverty and inequality—are the communities that are most impacted by it, but there are serious problems in the way in which we are currently tackling the issue. Our approach in Scotland is still focused on antisocial behaviour as an individual problem, rather than as an expression of too many parts of our society being left behind, and we should be looking to change that.