Active Citizenship in the Governance of anti-social behaviour in the UK: exploring the non-reporting of incidents

Promoting active citizenship in order to enhance the efficacy of formal and informal social control within local neighbourhoods is a key component of anti-social behaviour policy in the UK. Calls for citizens to ‘take a stand’ against anti-social behaviour characterises the emerging ‘Respect’ agenda alongside an increasing presence of ‘official’ authority figures, including additional police officers and wardens, in local communities. Reporting incidents of anti-social behaviour to local agencies is a key mechanism of active citizenship within local community safety interventions. However, this article highlights the scale of the non-reporting of anti-social behaviour in the UK and uses findings from two recent research studies in Scotland to identify nine explanatory factors for non-reporting. The article argues that the problem of non-reporting illustrates the ambiguity of policy conceptualisations of the relative roles of state and citizen and formal and informal social control processes within anti-social behaviour strategies.