 Leeds City Council took action to combat anti-social behaviour |
Three judges have praised Leeds City Council for issuing 66 Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) in a crack-down on the Little London estate. The Court of Appeal upheld the council's decision at a hearing on Thursday, after a district judge imposed the ASBOs last year.
The judges praised the council's action to rid the estate of people making "residents' lives a nightmare".
The groundbreaking action helped combat violence and drug crime in the area.
Dismissed
The orders, which banned the juveniles from the estate on which they lived, sparked a storm of protests from lawyers claiming the move violated human rights.
But the judges, headed by the nation's most senior civil judge, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips, dismissed an appeal brought by one of the youths involved - a 17-year-old referred to only as M.
Lord Justice Kennedy said that for some time before July 2003 there had been "increasingly serious problems with drug-dealing and associated crime in the Little London area of Leeds."
He added: "Police operations were difficult, and there was a lot of violent crime, which made life miserable for law-abiding citizens who live there."
Given the seriousness of law and order problems on the estate, Lord Justice Kennedy accepted it had been "necessary" to apply for the interim ASBO's without giving advance notice to the 66.
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