A Medical Lens and a Moral Filter: Social Landlords and their Control of Antisocial Behaviour Perpetrated by Occupants with Mental Impairments

This thesis explores social landlords’ management of antisocial behaviour (ASB) perpetrated by people with known or suspected mental impairments. That landlords do not always have knowledge of individual perpetrators’ impairments is a fundamental premise of this thesis. It argues that social landlords nevertheless sit at a crossroads of policy agendas, having responsibility to house people with such impairments and control ASB. This policy conflict is exacerbated by the broad definition of ASB and the availability of disability-related challenges to ASB proceedings.

There is a gap in the literature empirically examining disability-related challenges to social landlords’ use of ASB proceedings. Thus, this thesis seeks to address that gap by exploring housing officers’ decision-making in the control of ASB at this juncture of policy. In examining these issues, it asks whether policy and housing management practice approximate to a social or medical model of disability and what influence housing officers’ understandings of risk and housing professionalism have on decision-making. Examining understandings of risk, ASB and disability justified a social constructionist approach. Qualitative methods were used with four housing associations in which their policies were analysed followed by interviews with managers and vignette-led focus groups; case files were analysed followed by interviews with officers. The data was thematically analysed.

The findings are examined to reveal that officers’ use of interventions in ASB control is affected by professional issues and risk. They are also informed by both medical and moral understandings of perpetrators and disability resulting in differential outcomes.

The importance of the study relates to constructions of disability and their consequences: officers’ minimal compliance with equality law or extraordinary treatment may correspondingly result in social exclusion or inclusion. The recommendations for policy are reform of equalities legislation, better support for individual perpetrators and measures to improve relations between social landlords and medico-welfare agencies.