The politics of anti-social behaviour

There is a good essay on this subject by Dolan Cummings on the Spiked website:

Fifteen years ago, the term "antisocial behaviour" was barely in use. Through the 1990s the term grew in currency, as the perception increased that community was breaking down and that people's behaviour, in particular young people's behaviour, was deteriorating. Concerns about social problems increasingly became focused on individual behaviour rather than the economic or structural factors that had hitherto dominated politics.

And:

A political approach based on fear and distrust, which encourages the belief that every minor irritation is the tip of an iceberg, is never going to overcome public anxiety.