Antisocial behaviour: The construction of a crime

Stuart Waiton has an essay on the Spiked website: "Antisocial behaviour: The construction of a crime." It is well worth reading:

By defining antisocial behaviour as a major social problem, the political elite has, over the past decade, helped to generate a spiralling preoccupation with the petty behaviour of young people. At no time in history has the issue of crime as a social problem in and of itself been so central to all of the political parties in the UK - and yet, there has been a significant statistical fall in crime itself.