YORK Dungeon has been widely condemned for a controversial decision to give anyone with an anti-social behavior order (ASBO) free entry this weekend.

The attraction has made the offer to allow anyone with an ASBO to go in free to celebrate the opening of an exhibition on justice through the ages.

But York residents who had their car tyres slashed when hooded youths went on the rampage in November last year see differently.

Back then, hundreds of residents of Burton Stone Lane, Cromer Street, Glencoe Street, Pembroke Street and Shipton Street woke to find their cars had been vandalised in what one Clifton resident described as the worst incident in 35 years.

Today, one Cromer Street resident, who did not want to be named, said: "This move by York Dungeon is absolutely disgusting.

"If I wanted to go into the Dungeon this weekend I'd have to pay, but if someone like the person who slashed my tyres went along they could get in for free. It's just not right.

"I think the Dungeon should be thinking more about the victims of crime rather than rewarding the people who already think it's okay to go around damaging other people's property."

York MP Hugh Bayley has also condemned the Dungeon.

He said: "This is a publicity-seeking gimmick which goes too far.

"The public needs protection from anti-social behaviour and York Dungeon shouldn't be rewarding people who have been sentenced to an ASBO by the courts.

"York's magistrates were the first in the country to hand out an ASBO and they were the first in the country to jail somebody for breaking the terms of an ASBO.

"ASBOs are imposed on people who have been a serial nuisance to their neighbours. York Dungeon really should think again."

But the Dungeon has defended its decision saying it is not looking to reward people with ASBOs.

Dungeon manager Helen Douglas said she made the unusual offer to let offenders experience how their anti-social behaviour would have been dealt with in the past.

She said: "What we're handing out ASBOs for today are exactly the same sort of crimes that people would have been transported or even hanged for during the bloody code' of the 18th century.

"While I'm by no means advocating a return to the punishments of old, I thought that it might shock the ASBOs a little to see what would have happened to them a couple of hundred years ago."

She said that since their controversial inception in York in 2000, ASBOs have been blamed for not providing sufficient deterrent to wrongdoers, an assertion backed by the fact that almost half of those issued in the city have been breached.

Coun Ruth Potter, City of York Council's representative on the North Yorkshire Police Authority, said: "I'm absolutely appalled that the Dungeon is not taking ASBOs seriously at all. The fact that they are actually giving an incentive to people who have got them is totally irresponsible."


How it works

Free admission to York Dungeon will be offered from today until Monday to anyone with an ASBO.

To take up the offer, you must provide an official copy of a police letter outlining the terms and restrictions of the order, along with photographic identification.