Procedural justice and process-based models: understanding how practitioners utilise Community Protection Notices to regulate anti-social behaviour.

Community Protection Notices (CPNs) were created and introduced in England and Wales through the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act (2014). They are used to prevent and/or require specific actions by an individual or organisation, where existing behaviour has ‘a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality’. A wide range of criminal justice actors can issue CPNs, and they require a low/no standard of evidence to do so. Breach of a CPN results in a Fixed Penalty Notice of £100 or a possible criminal conviction. Using procedural justice theory as an analytical framework, our research is the first to investigate how CPNs are constructed, evidenced, and monitored by the authorising bodies. The findings highlight divergent local practices, which sometimes lack procedural safeguards and adherence to Home Office statutory guidance. We propose 10 empirically based recommendations for policy and legislative changes to CPN issuing practices