Scotland's approach to antisocial behaviour: review findings

Feedback from engagement sessions

Approach taken for engagement sessions

This report reflects the views, opinions and experiences of 25 different stakeholder sessions, involving close to 250 people representing a wide range of interests (Annex B - methodology summary), who were consulted via discussion workshops, in-person and online with the Scottish Community Safety Network and the Scottish Government.

Unfortunately, some groups we contacted were unavailable to participate within the given timescales, so we acknowledge that the report does not necessarily represent the views of the entire population, all communities or all under-represented groups. Nonetheless, given the size and breadth of engagement, the report does provide a substantive qualitative evidence base.

Greater detail of these conversations can be found in the feedback section of the report. Discussions included officers from various Local Authority services (community safety partnerships, antisocial behaviour teams, community wardens) and councillors (elected members), community councils, community groups, equalities groups (such as race, faith, disability, younger and older people, women’s and men’s groups), the emergency services, social housing providers, public transport operators and victim support representatives. In addition, some written feedback was also provided.

Three questions were asked:

a) What changes should be made to the current approach or what further steps should be taken to help prevent antisocial behaviour?

b) What might the challenges - or the unintended consequences - be of making these changes?

c) How could we support people better to deal with antisocial behaviour?

A discussion paper was provided to all groups (Annex A).

This was a listening, reflective process inviting people to share their views based on their experience. No quantitative statistics were collected for this exercise although there was general awareness of statistical data. Therefore, the data gathered provides qualitative evidence from our review of the feedback from these discussions which were collated and considered before being summarised in this report, reflecting common themes and ideas that were expressed.

This report may be regarded as a ‘stepping stone’ in identifying potential themes and areas of interest including improvement suggestions for future work.

These conversations confirmed that it is timely to review Scotland’s approach to antisocial behaviour and endorsed the view that prevention is better than cure. The discussions indicated that there is no single approach that will prevent all antisocial behaviour, which can be caused by complex problems experienced by individuals and communities. In other words, we need to look for underlying problems to identify drivers for this behaviour.

Themes that emerged are wide ranging, and are summarised in the following sections of this report, with primacy given to themes that arose more often, alongside other qualitative information that was shared.