Police launch anti-social behaviour campaign

A new campaign to empower witnesses and victims of antisocial behaviour (ASB) to speak out has been launched by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley.

Towards the end of last year, the force visited graphic design students from Milton Keynes College to talk to them about ASB and the effect this can have on our communities.

The students were given the opportunity to design adverts to support the campaign and encourage reporting of any instances of antisocial behaviour that they see. 

The winning design was by Milton Keynes College student Chiamaka Ahaneku. 

ASB is not always categorised as a crime and often takes a multi-agency response. It can also occur during an incident which involves another crime type. 

It can fall into three different category areas: Personal ASB which targets a specific person or group, nuisance ASB which causes trouble or disturbance to a community and environmental ASB where a person’s actions affect the wider environment.  

A national report into antisocial behaviour in 2024, published by Resolve UK, found that there were likely more than five million incidents of ASB nationwide in 2023.  

Not only that, ASB has forced more than one in seven of us to consider moving home, with one in four left feeling unsafe in their area.  

Dishearteningly, YouGov data continually shows that more than half of victims or witnesses to all types of ASB do not report them. In the last three years, only 26 per cent of victims and witnesses reported an ASB incident to the police.  

This can be for several reasons; the main one sadly being people thinking their issue was not serious enough to report. But we are here to tell you it is.  

Head of Thames Valley Police’s Community Policing Command, Superintendent John Batty, said: “Antisocial behaviour can take many forms, from noise nuisance and graffiti to neighbour disputes and drug dealing. It can be a real blight on people’s lives.  

“ASB is not a crime in itself but a description for a number of behaviours, many of which can be criminal offences.

“The police are not always the agency with the right powers to tackle every ASB issue, for instance local authorities have the powers to deal with noise nuisance.  

“However, it is important that agencies work in partnership, to identify and tackle the root causes of ASB.  

“In order to do that effectively, we need people who are affected by ASB to report it to us.”  

Deputy Head of School for Arts and Media at Milton Keynes College, Kyle Kirkpatrick, said: “It’s fantastic that our students have been able to support the new campaign against antisocial behaviour from Thames Valley Police.  

“They all loved working on a project that can make a real difference in local communities and the designs that they came up with were fantastic.  

“We’re particularly proud of Chiamaka for producing the winning design, and we’re hopeful that her design can help to make the campaign a success”. 

If the issue is serious to you, it is serious to us. It’s that loud, it’s that hurtful, it’s that risky. It’s that antisocial.   

If you experience or witness ASB, report it to Thames Valley Police, via the TVP website. 

More information on what ASB is and how to spot it can be found on the TVP website: What is antisocial behaviour? | Thames Valley Police