Football Banning Orders

Abstract

In this chapter I want to focus on a rather different type of restriction, namely the Football Banning Order which was enacted under the Football (Disorder) Act 2000. I wish to highlight not only the nature of this type of restriction, but also importantly, the way in which it has been implemented and question whether it is another example of imposing what might be called ‘quasi-criminal sanctions’ on people in much the same way as the Anti Social Behaviour Order. Whilst there was a burst of interest regarding the legality of football banning orders around the time of a famous Court of Appeal decision in the case of Gough — which I will consider specifically later in this chapter — this issue has mostly been ignored. However, there is more scope for debate regarding the legality of these types of sanctions and perhaps even to put forward an argument that if any one of these quasi-criminal sanctions are questioned, then all of them would collapse. Whilst currently football banning orders and the way they have been implemented are assumed to be acceptable because of the judgement in Gough I want to highlight the fact that, with the exception of the work of James & Pearson (2006) there has simply not been a full intellectual engagement of the issue.