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Post wins right to name young ASBO gang

The Nottingham Evening Post has won the right to name four youths handed anti-social behaviour orders.

At a civil hearing district judge John Stobart agreed to lift reporting restrictions after representations from the paper.

It argued that for the ASBOs to be properly enforced the community must know who the boys are.

The decision to lift restrictions meant the paper could publish their names and photographs on its front page, and reveal the full extent of their 18-month crime spree.

Deputy editor Martin Done said: “We apply to lift reporting restrictions in cases such as this as a matter of course.

“The principles of the ASBOs would be diminished if they had anonymity.

“And from a readers’ point of view, they are on the sharp end of the misery that is caused and welcome naming and shaming.”

A Section 39 order was placed on the four boys when each of them was given an interim ASBO in September.

The district judge on that day listened to arguments from the Post, but said the order should remain in place until they had received full ASBOs.

Reporting on the news, the Post’s opinion column read: “An ASBO without full disclosure of the identity of the recipient is as useful as a chocolate teapot.

“That is why we have sought and won the right to name them. But you wonder why such a process is necessary.

“Surely it would be better if the Children and Young Persons Act did not apply in ASBO cases, and that the recipients of order are automatically identified – in the public interest – unless their lawyers can persuade the courts that exceptional circumstances apply.”

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