One of Labour’s main policies to tackle yobbish disorder is facing a slow death after figures published yesterday showed a sharp drop in antisocial behaviour orders.

As they declined, the number of people breaching the terms of their orders rose to almost a half. Among juveniles the rate is 61 per cent and among adults it is 43 per cent, according to the Home Office figures. The overall breach rate is now 49 per cent.

ASBOs were a key initiative of Tony Blair to help to improve the lives of people affected by yobbish behaviour on estates and in town centres.

Critics complained that they were a blunt instrument that did not address the underlying problems causing antisocial behaviour.

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister responsibility for anti-social behaviour was split between the Home Office and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, leading to allegations of poor coordination on the issue.

The Respect Task Force, which led the antisocial behaviour drive, was disbanded and the Respect Commissioner, Louise Casey, was given a new job as head of a Cabinet Office review of crime and communities.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, signalled yesterday that the Government was intent on intervening early to nip anti-social behaviour in the bud. The number of ASBOs had fallen because the Government was stepping in with a range of other remedies, such as acceptable behaviour contracts.

“We are not taking it easy on antisocial behaviour – we are getting in early. These early interventions have increased almost fourfold in the past year, putting a stop to problems before they get out of control and before antisocial behaviour orders are required,” Ms Smith said in a speech at Church House in Westminster.

She talked about ASBOs in the past tense, saying: “The ASBO was powerful proof that people no longer had to suffer in silence or just put up with it.” Ed Balls, the Children’s Minister, has already said that every ASBO is a failure and that he wants to live in a society where we can “put ASBOs behind us”. Between April 1999 and December 31, 2006, 12,675 were issued. The annual number fell by more than a third in 2006 to 2,706.

On more than 9,000 occasions between June 2000 and December 2006 people breaching ASBOs have been sent to prison, with the average jail term being four and a half months. The latest figures were released hours after Ms Smith praised Operation Leopard, a scheme piloted in Basildon, Essex, in which prolific offenders were put under round-the-clock surveillance. She said that other forces could learn from the tactics in which police “harass the harassers”, but she provided no additional money for them to adopt similar strategies.

In Operation Leopard, which ran for a few days on an estate in Basildon, police targeted 14 known offenders, visiting their homes regularly and filming them on the streets. “It creates an environment where those responsible for antisocial behaviour have no room for manoeuvre and nowhere to hide, where the tables are turned on offenders so that those who harass our communities are themselves harried and harassed,” she said.

Ms Smith also called for other checks to be made against a hard core of troublemakers, including whether their vehicles were licensed and whether they had paid council tax and had television licences.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “The Government are giving up on ASBOs because of their appalling breach rate. Yet the Government’s answer is to replace them with acceptable behaviour contracts. These are breached by almost two thirds of under-18-year-olds. The Government is repeating the same failed strategy under a new name.”

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