The introduction of Respect Orders today will allow people to be imprisoned for nothing more than entering a particular area of town, asking for 50p, or feeding the birds.

We know this because this is exactly what happened under the forerunner of the Respect Order – the Anti-Social Behaviour Injunction – from which it differs only slightly. It is the same test, applied for in the same courts.

The Respect Order can ban somebody from doing certain things (such as entering a certain area) and if they breach this they can be arrested and imprisoned for up to 2 years. The Respect Order can also require them to do certain things, such as attending an appointment – so they could be also be imprisoned for missing an appointment.

A Respect Order can be issued if someone (on the balance of probabilities) has behaved (or threatened to behave) in a way that causes anti-social behaviour, and the court considers it ‘just and convenient’ to issue an order to prevent them from engaging in anti-social behaviour. Anti-social behaviour is defined as behaviour that has caused (or is likely to cause) harassment, alarm or distress to any person.

Taking all these provisos together: someone can get an order if

on the balance of probabilities a person has threatened to behave in a way that is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to a single person

This is very flimsy. Still worse, an ‘interim Respect Order’ can be applied for without you even knowing about it.

The Home Office has never even kept basic data on the workings of the Anti-Social Behaviour Injunction. The main work on it has been done by two academics, Rona Epstein and Caroline Hunter, who examined court reports and categorised the results; their reports are co-published by the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life.

Epstein and Hunter found that over 400 people had been imprisoned for breach of civil injunction, and that a high number of these were homeless or travellers, or had mental health problems. Those imprisoned included two men for feeding the birds, a woman for 18 months for calling 999, while another woman was imprisoned for 18 months for entering and attempting to sleep in the YMCA. Several people were imprisoned for begging or for sleeping rough, including a woman for asking for 50p.

Most worrying, over half (57%) of people were not represented at their breach hearing, questioning the fairness of the trial. In a substantial number of cases, the person was imprisoned for non-criminal behaviour, including a third of cases where they entered a banned area, and 25% of cases where they used foul or abusive language.

Such imprisonments if anything will become more likely with the Respect Order, since breach is a criminal offence and breach prosecutions will be handled by the CPS in the criminal courts.

The Respect Order shows us that there is something very wrong with our criminal justice system. The Respect Order was a press release before it was a legal power – Labour talked about it for about 18 months before they knew what the power would be or do.

Creating a new power to issue personalised orders is one of the ways that successive governments show that they are doing something and taking action on things people don’t like. A JUSTICE working party identified 33 of these powers to order, and the Crime and Policing Act alone has added another six.

But each of these powers further disregulates the justice system, because it shifts the law from a general clear rule for everyone – the crimes that we all know about and should respect – to the creation of personalised instructions for how particular individuals should behave.

If someone has committed a criminal offence – drunk and disorderly conduct, theft, property damage, assault – they should be prosecuted and punished for it. The prosecution of criminal offences is not done well enough or seriously enough (as you’ll find out if you ever get burgled).

But if someone has merely uttered a curse, entered a part of town, or put down some bird feed – this is not a crime. This does not correspond with any rational or publicly recognisable idea of crime. Therefore it is irrational as well as deeply unjust to be spending public resources on that person’s arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment.

The Respect Order will not bring respect, nor will it bring order. It will mean people being imprisoned for doing something that was otherwise perfectly legal. But since the Home Office won’t be collecting data or examining court records to see how it is being used, this is something it will never know.