SIMON JENKINS believes that it is an offence against civil liberties that people should have antisocial behaviour orders (Asbos), underpinned by prison, served on them for such offences as drunkenness, prostitution and being “neighbours from hell”(Comment, May 29). Such problems may be rare enough where he lives but they are ruining the lives of many of my poorer constituents.

Of course he is right that we need to rebuild the bonds of civil society, which this government has played a major role in weakening. In a country where illegitimacy is nearing 50%, and many children have no male role models, this will take many years. Incredibly, Jenkins cites our continental neighbours as an example; yet they operate without habeus corpus. Weeks and months of arrest without charges involve a much greater limitation on civil liberties than Asbos.

There used to be a traditional remedy under British law until the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984. Habeus corpus usually allowed the police to hold a suspect for up to 24 hours without engaging in limitless paperwork. The fact that this power still exists in most common law jurisdictions outside the UK allows their police another approach to relentless petty offenders, without a huge investment of time and money in frequently fruitless prosecutions. The famous zero-tolerance programme in New York started with seizing and holding youths who were who were caught illegally washing car windscreens overnight; this allowed a massive process of cross checking for other crimes. This programme is widely seen to have transformed life there yet it would have been illegal in Britain.

Julian Brazier MP
House of Commons, London