Brighton is a booze ban city. Drinking alcohol is not actually illegal, but possessing it can result in its seizure by police and community officers. This is a terrible idea legally, but perhaps more importantly, the powers the Home Office has given Brighton and Hove City Council, and its abuse of them, is a socially corrosive crackdown on public culture.

This morning my friend and colleague Dan Travis was live on BBC1 discussing the alcohol-control zones that we’ve been discussing publicly and campaigning about this week. Dan produced and chaired a discussion on the Brighton booze ban on Thursday evening. It featured Josie Appleton, director of the Manifesto Club, and me, representing the Brighton Salon. On Saturday afternoon, a group of us had a ‘protest picnic’ on the beach near Hove.

Dan had been interviewed as part of The Times’ coverage (1) of a report Josie published on Thursday called ‘Robbed by the Police: Alcohol Confiscation and the Hyper Regulation of Public Space’ (2). Dan spent three weeks trying get someone from Brighton and Hove City Council to come and discuss the issue, to no avail. Needless to say, the BBC crew found someone to represent the council’s view at much shorter notice. The lady made two very important concessions to our objections about the law.

Targeting the lager, not the louts

A Designated Public Place Order allows police and community safety officers (or police community service officers) to confiscate alcohol, even unopened containers, on suspicion that the alcohol may be drunk in public within the zone and result in some form of nuisance or disorder. Refusal can result in a fixed penalty for disorder of £50, arrest, fines of £500 (soon to rise to £2,500) and a bail condition order forbidding a person drink in public. Dan related how his unopened cans were seized by PCSOs after visiting an off-licence on his way home. The council spokeswoman said that the law was supposed to be targeted at people likely to offend, and street drinkers, who had been causing problems for local residents.

On BBC Breakfast, the Brighton council spokeswoman quoted a survey taken by the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP) in 2003, which showed 89% of people in Brighton would welcome greater powers to deal with anti-social drinking, citing street drinkers as a particular problem for the city. The CDRP info on crime and disorder incidents stretches back only to 2005 online, but some of the results of different surveys go back six years. Since 2003 the situation looks very different (3). Plotting the percentage of respondents ‘feeling that people being drunk or rowdy in area [is] a problem in their area’, over four surveys, a graph shows 63.9% felt this way in 2003; 49.2% in 2006; 37.2% in 2007 (the year I believe the alcohol control zone began to be enforced); and 33.9% in 2008.

This perception of the problem of on-street drinking was in decline when the council turned most of the city into an alcohol control zone. Perceptions about street drug abuse and dealing fell sharply during this period as well, so perhaps the various agencies were doing some things right. Police recorded incidents of social disorder between April 2005 and April 2009 show seasonal variation between a low of about 1,000 per month in winter to a high of between 1,400 and 1,500 in summer. There were about 15,000 incidents between 2008 and 2009. In that time, only 13 ASBOs were obtained in the city. There has been a surge in the number of street drinkers. There were, on average during quarterly counting exercises, 27 in 2006/07, 32 in 2007/08 and 48 in 2008/09.

The number of violent crimes since April 2005 has shown seasonal variation but appears to be on a trend downwards. A peak shows in summer 2006 possibly, the site suggests, as a result of the World Cup, although this is not explained. All violent crimes fell by 13.9% and 21.8% and ‘A&E assaults outside the home’ fell by 15.5% and 5.6% in 2007/08 and in April to September, 2008.

Tough on crime; tough on stuff that’s nothing to do with the causes of crime

The figures from the CDRP website suggest that there is neither a perception of crime nor an increase in actual crime that requires draconian powers. Brighton and Hove City Council applied this power of alcohol confiscation across most of the city but diagrams of the distribution of both public place violence and recorded incidents of social disorder, arranged by council ward, show there are hot spots, unsurprisingly in central and coastal areas. The council has applied Home Office-derived powers across most of its territory that were intended by central government only for particular areas of concern. At the same time, other, less headline-worthy initiatives appear to have been having some effect.

The perceptions upon which justification for new powers was based no longer apply. Street drinkers targeted as contributors to the problem, perceived and in reality, seem to have little effect on it. PCSOs are arbitrarily targeting random persons with drink, not people whose drinking is a problem. Even if problematic drinkers were targeted by these powers, how would a cop or a community non-cop be able to tell they were going to offend before they have actually done so?

Hyperregulating the public destroys public space

If the random targeting of people that makes possession of alcohol an inarguable offence were not bad enough, the council also has the power to suspend its DPPO and licence alcohol itself for temporary public events such as fetes, farmers’ markets, carnivals and so on. Through its licensing powers, the council can now control what events can or cannot have alcohol, effectively deciding what events, formal or informal, may or may not go ahead. The council always had this power over premises and public areas it owned, but they are now extended over most of the public space of the city, regardless, and can be applied instantly in response to any improvised apearane by numbers of the public.

The operation of the DPPO was in itself anti-social but, coupled with the same authority’s licensing powers and its zeal in persecuting any unlucky drinker, a sinister potential to close public space down entirely has been brought into existence. The council was understandably sheepish about coming to defend treating people like sheep for our public meeting. Dan’s appearance on TV winkled out a spokesman, however, and that shows that the little protest we made and the meeting we called on the issue were well worthwhile.

After discussing many aspects of the booze ban in Brighton last week, it struck me that many of us were thinking about how this law might be fought in a legal way. I think that bringing it out into the open and forcing the council to defend it, politically, has a much better chance of reversing the DPPO sooner than any challenge in the courts.