This week marks the first ever Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) Awareness Week across the UK.

Police Now participants work as neighbourhood police officers whilst on the National Graduate Leadership Programme, working in their communities to tackle deep-rooted problems and reduce ASB from the very start of their policing careers.

PC Beth Honess of Kent Police, Medway, has used a number of ASB tools such as Criminal Behaviour Orders, Community Protection Warnings/Notices and Closure Orders to disrupt criminality including theft, shoplifting and regular assaults within Medway high streets.

PC Honess has issued 18 Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs) including against a prolific shoplifter in Chatham and Gillingham high streets, who, in the course of her offending, would assault anyone who attempted to stop her. She primarily received conditions that banned her from the high streets that she offended in. The offender was also known to attend the address of a vulnerable adult and ‘cuckoo’ – where someone takes advantage of a vulnerable individual and uses their home to conduct crime – so she was also banned from that address. This CBO was made to last five years but she has since breached these conditions on several occasions and has received several custodial sentences. 

PC Honess said “I have become a point of contact in my district, and further, for the utilisation of Criminal Behaviour Orders in preventing crime and disrupting prolific offenders. I am proud of the progress that I have made in the Force and the mark that I have made in using an effective tool that has been widely recognised and asked about.”