I was involved in a discussion this morning about ASBOs, finding them on-line and publishing them on hyperlocal sites. I am no legal expert but I know that each time a web page is viewed it classed as being republished, where as printed materials have a published date and that is pretty much it.

I know I have asked for information from the police for my own site, and been given printed copies, when I said that I could scan them and put them on-line as PDF files I was told it would be better if I didn’t because of the publishing issue.

The question this morning was very definitely about getting information on ASBOs and putting all the information on-line so people

A. knew about the ASBO being in place
B. could then let the police know if they saw it being broken.

I don’t know what the answer is so I asked a couple of press officers and this is one of the responses.

This is a tricky one because current national guidance on this is under review and due to be published.  ultimately it’s down to each force, but Every decision on publishing details of an Asbo must be made on a case by case basis and the risks to the subject, witnesses and community has to be assessed before deciding how to publish.

I have had a case were there were real risks that if we had published a leaflet the subject could have caused harm to themselves, and the risk of breaching the asbo was low, therefore I didn’t authorise the release of the leaflet.

The asbo guidance states that publicity should be localised to the community affected by the actions of the subject, with the principle being that we update those affected that action has been taken, encouraging members of the public to report breaches of the asbo within the affect affected. Its important to remember that an asbo almost always geographically based and all publicity should be proportionate and timely.  This is particularly important as many asbo are issued to under 18s whose identity is normally protected under criminal law and the asbo specific recommends publicity.

This is were the human right act comes in and were a number agencies have faced legal action when it has been argued that the publicity has not been proportionate when publicity has been seen outside the specific area and some time after the court case.

That’s why the leafleting works, as we can demonstrate the area of distribution, timescale of distribution and clearly demonstrates that we have taken action without risking legal action.

The risk with web site publication is we can’t protect the area of distribution and re can’t protect the republication of the image, so difficult to show how you prevented republication.

Larger news organisations print articles as court reports and as they have larger budgets for protecting themselves from legal action are rarely challenged for publishing.  They also only publish contemporaneously which offers protection.  I know that locally the sentinel run asbo stories via there staff lawyers before publishing.

With this in the background we are also being urged to publish more and more outcomes of cases to improve confidence in the justice system but the clear guidance needed is not forthcoming so we will continue to carefully assess each one but it’s clear the leafleting option works well as the public like to receive leaflets and we can control it.

It would recommend that any editor of a local site speak to the police press office for each and every case before deciding to publish and they doing knowing they are responsible for that decision. [emphasis mine]

So over to you guys, should we publish ASBO information on hyperlocal sites? What are the risks? I’m hoping that from the discussion we can come up with some basic guidelines for publishing stuff like this, the most important one being

“It would recommend that any editor of a local site speak to the police press office for each and every case before deciding to publish and they doing knowing they are responsible for that decision.‘

Discuss..

Crime and anti-social behaviour are the most challenging topics local websites have to tackle.  But most local sites don’t  want to add to local fear of crime by just reporting incidents – we want to publish results and support our local criminal justice professionals in the police, crown prosecution service, courts and prisons.  Finding out what is going on in local courts would be very useful.

Ante-diluvian court processes combine with the minefield of contempt of court to make it tricky to write about local justice being done.  As a local web publisher in an area with a long, tragic history of ASB with a sizable local audience I’d like daily court results and timetables posted to a courts website, preferably with an RSS feed.  After all, you can go to the court and watch from the gallery or see the screens.  So this little noticed (by me) excerpt from a  Ministry of Justice green paper earlier this year seems wrong to me.

‘210. It is clear that there needs to be a balance between providing communities with information on court outcomes, which is in the public domain, and the need to ensure that such information is not misused. This issue is particularly pertinent because of the power of the internet to collect and make available information from a wide range of sources, and the difficulties of regulating the way in which such information is stored and reused.
211. We believe that it is not in the public interest to facilitate the creation of uncontrolled, privately held databases, and therefore intend to place the following restrictions on how information is accessed: Access to court outcomes online will require registration at level 1 of the e-Government standards66 to provide substantial assurance that the registrant’s identity has been verified. Registered users will be able to choose to see results for two courts of their choice; changing these preferences will require application to the systems administrator. Users will then be able to search all results from these two courts from the past four weeks. Information on the website will be copy protected so that it cannot be copied and pasted into other documents.
212. A prototype of the website will be made available for the duration of the Green Paper consultation.67 This will report specifically on the outcomes of knife possession cases tried in the adult magistrates’ courts, supporting the current initiative on tackling knife crime. Comments are invited on the level of security and accessibility of information. We will also look at how we can link this website to the continuing development of crime maps, to support the aim of ensuring that members of the public can get the maximum information about crime, policing and justice in a joined-up way from a linked set of sources, at as local a level as possible.’

Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice Cm 7583 April 2009, Page 81′

I appreciate the argument about long term rehabilitation and spent convictions, but this piece suggests that websites are different from newspapers, which are now almost wholly online.  If say The Times or the Islington Gazette reports an individual arrest, charge or trial in progress in the paper, it also appears online.  At no point do the articles link forward to the outcome of the trial if the subject is found innocent.  They effectively create a primitive unregulated database online.  And whilst i enjoy working with the police, even the best forces would admit they have a very long way to go to publish criminal justice outcomes in a way that reassure local people.

What do people think of this position – is it reasonable or is it out of kilter?  Is it worth lobbying to change it?  Do we think that the senior politicians who recently gathered in Downing Street to talk open data are aware of it? As it is a green paper from Ministry of Justice, this usually means that minds are open and can be influenced.

I guess i must share some blame for the Ministry of Justice position as I had worked inside the system up to that point (declaration) but i feel this doesn’t stick to the principles of the power of information work i was involved in.

People want to read about crime – mainly to be reassured it won’t happen to them.  Every Council ward in England and Wales should now have a Safer Neighbourhoods Team and a Panel that gives the team direction.  This is a return to the old school Dixon of Dock Green approach.  I am a member of my Safer Neighbourhood Panel – it is a remarkable experience to sit down with your local sergeant, the constables and the police community support officers, discuss problems and set their priorities for the coming months.  I like this post from We love Larkhall on the SNP – not least for the superb poster I have borrowed above.

As crime and fear of crime has sadly become a national obsession, which makes it a grim but necessary source of material for an ultra local website – you can keep people informed about what is going on, help the police communicate (something they aren’t naturals at) and provide links for the community to online police material.  Just Google up your local police force and their site front page normally has a link to a Safer Neighbourhoods page.  This will often have a phone number and a direct email that you can link to or provide in a permanent side bar or little text box on your own page.  Brixton SNP has its own blog here.  Otherwise the internet landscape for SNPs and SNTs is errrr, diverse – the police seem to have gone for an unplanned ‘thousand flowers’ approach (see here)

People also cover warnings about criminal activity that come around all communities by email and text (though check a little first to see if it well founded).  It is possible to get some striking images – like this one sent in by my councillor or this one of a moped fire – when i see smoke in the neighbourhood i grab the mobile and start dialling 999, grab a camera and run for the scene while i go through the operator screening process.  The urban area I write about has many big yellow incident boards – a photo of one accompanied by writing up the details and appeal or witnesses can help the problem and makes for a striking post.