Anti social behaviour: What's the solution?

It takes time to change attitudes towards anti social behaviour

All this week, Breakfast is looking at anti social behaviour which can make the lives of thousands of people miserable.

It's thought that it costs three and a half billion pounds a year and can affect every aspect of life.

Noisy music, graffiti, vandalism and aggressive behaviour are just some of the things that can cause offence and upset.

We've looked at problems with fireworks, but today we consider the big picture. With so many people's lives being blighted by anti social behaviour should we be doing more to stop it?

And what about the government's responsibilities to us? Should it be doing more.

Today on Breakfast we looked at a project in Wolverhampton to get young people off the streets and into music and dj-ing.

Click here to see that report

And we discussed some of the issues from across the week with Labour MP Frank Field - he's also director of the Child Poverty action Group and commentator on social policy Yvonne Roberts.

You can see that item by clicking on the link above.

Frank Field is the MP for Birkenhead, he says his post bag is dominated by letters about anti social behaviour.

He thinks that common decencies should be restored, but in doing this we should take punitive measures like stopping benefits, in any case tackle the problem head on.

He's just written a book called Neighbours from Hell in which he says we need to tackle this blight on our communities.

One of the root causes of anti social behaviour is the way parents are failing to teach social and moral values to their children.

The church plays much less of a role in our lives today, and the contribution to people's lives by the welfare system is much less - the influence of both lasted for such a long time.

Yvonne Roberts is a columnist for Community Care magazine and writes about social policy for newspapers including the Guardian.

She disagrees with Frank Field, and thinks punitive measures are wrong.

If it was that easy, it would have worked by now.

She believes that so called anti social behaviour orders are ineffective - they're not consistent across the country and simply pass the problem to someone else.

Roberts believes young people should be given space and resources and this will give them purpose.

There was no such thing as the golden age of the 1950s, she believes that era simply never existed and certainly does not think society is breaking down.

Frank Field has seen problems in his own constituency and many feel his heart is in the right place.

But people are not impoverished like they were in the 1950s and the overall quality of life is better today.

Equally, it's just about throwing money at estates for example so they can build youth clubs.

If people come together with the support of the police and local councils, then it might be possible to take direct action and begin to address some of the issues that lead to the noise, violence and damage.

Send us your views on anti social behaviour, do you think the government should do more - e-mail us now