'Have-a-go hero training' urged for public to tackle antisocial behaviour

The public should be offered "have-a-go hero" training by the police on how to confront antisocial behaviour and deal with aggression and conflict, according to a report. The Royal Society of Arts (RSA) report, published yesterday, says a radical "citizens' defence" approach to tackling antisocial behaviour is needed one year after the English riots. The study by Ben Rogers, director of the Centre for London thinktank, acknowledges that the public will need to be trained in self-defence skills as well as how to read a situation if they are to be encouraged to intervene on the streets.



The proposal is partly based on the experience of Dfuse, a small charity set up in 2007, to provide courses by experienced police trainers and hostage negotiators in defusing social conflict and responding to crime and antisocial behaviour. The Dfuse website says: "Most people do not want to stand by when someone else is in difficulty or when we see others vandalising, bullying or being threatening. We have a natural urge to try to cool arguments or prevent fighting but in today's streets such actions feel very risky. Worse still, there are frequent reports of people who were trying to help getting hurt." The organisation offers ways of responding without putting yourself or others in danger.

The RSA report says that such methods should be adopted nationally. "With the real prospect of traditional police patrolling being scaled back, now is surely the time to focus seriously on agreeing the core skills that active citizens need – individually or collectively – if they are to step up to the mark," says Rogers. "The coalition government has signalled its determination to encourage and support citizens to 'have a go' and intervene to stop criminal behaviour. But to do this citizens need training and the government needs a strategy if these emerging ideas are to be supported and developed." The report suggests such training should include how to restrain an assailant and make a citizen's arrest as well as how to defuse and mediate a situation. It says the public have little or no confidence to intervene and this approach would go some way towards healing anxious communities.



Rogers says police officers or lay trainers should offer courses to people. As well as members of the public, frontline public servants such as park keepers, public transport workers, parking enforcement officers and community and youth workers should be included. The report, First Aid Approaches to Managing Antisocial Behaviour, concludes there has been a lack of strategic thinking about the problem and that the police and crime commissioners who take office after elections in November should take on the role of championing the training of the public in this way. It says that it could be done by replicating the "Woolwich model" under which first aid training was pioneered in south-east London in 1878 and became popular across the world.