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4 UK Urban Explorers Face Orders Not To Talk With Each Other For 10 Years
First time accepted submitter Trapezium Artist writes "Four friends apprehended exploring the disused Aldwych station in London's Underground are faced with an 'anti-social behaviour order' (ASBO) which would forbid them from talking to each other for a full 10 years. The so-called 'Aldwych four,' experienced urban explorers, were discovered in the tunnels under the UK's capital city a few days before last year's royal wedding and the greatly increased security measures in place led to their being interviewed by senior members of the British Transport Police. Nevertheless, once their benign intentions had been established, they were let off with a caution. However, following an accident caused by another, unrelated group of urban explorers in the tunnels a few months later, Transport for London applied to have ASBOs issued to the Aldwych four. These would forbid them from any further expeditions, from blogging or otherwise publicly discussing any exploits, and even from talking with each other for the 10 year duration of the order. One could argue about the ethics of urban exploration, but this nevertheless seems like an astonishingly heavy-handed over-reaction by TfL."
You incarcerate them when you catch them breaking the ruling. ASBOs are a huge end-run around due process, being civil orders that are written with the intention that they'll be broken so that criminal penalties can be applied.
I remember this government admitting that ASBOs didn't work and promising to do something about them, but nothing seems to have changed.
The point of an ASBO is that magistrates can basically make up a law on the spot and announce that it applies to just a few people.
In theory, it's meant to deal with small numbers - maybe as few as one - of people that are known to cause trouble by making it illegal for them to do things that would normally be perfectly OK because most people would be able to apply some common sense - but in their case aren't. Essentially it gives some flexibility when you've got someone who's discovered a way of persistently annoying people but can usually stay on the right side of the law. The BBC picked up some good examples a few years ago.
Critics have pointed out that it's absolutely ripe for abuse.
They now appear to be using asbos on repeat offenders of actual crime to strengthen the punishments available. There is a repeat offender from London who travels to Scotland to steal the eggs of protected birds, he now has an asbo preventing him from travelling to Scotland during hatching season.
IIRC the asbo increase the maximum sentence for egg theft (6 months) to 5 years.