Johann Hari: If you had a howling wolf at your door would you oppose the respect agenda?

So at last, Tony Blair's successor as Prime Minister has been revealed. It's not Gordon Brown. It's not David Miliband. It's not Charles Clarke. Twirl that glitterball and strike up that orchestra - it's Aretha Franklin. All the Prime Minister's asking is a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T, oh, just a little bit.

When I hear commentators from across the political spectrum waving away this Aretha agenda for the Labour Party as "a gimmick", "shallow" and "unworkable", I think about my cousin's estate just outside Manchester, a place that three years ago could only be described as a grey concrete chunk of chaos. A gang of teenage lads would gather at the end of her row most nights to play Eminem at full volume, crash each other around in manky old shopping trolleys and tip out wheelie bins over gardens. Occasionally the police would turn up - called by a distraught, sleepless resident - and the kids would disperse, only to reappear the moment the flashing blue light had receded into the distance.

Until the much-mocked respect reforms, that is. At first, all the kids were served with Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (ABCs), voluntary agreements with their parents to keep them in at night and away from the tightly-defined problem area. Most of the kids fell away. But a few remained, becoming even more testosterone-soaked and surly, chucking stones and yelling abuse. They were served with Asbos - and the low-level, high-volume misery for the residents simply stopped. Now they can do the small, simple things - sleep and rest - that the middle classes take for granted.

This isn't just an isolated anecdote. According to the British Crime Survey - the gold-standard, independent crime study accepted by all sides - the percentage of people fearing anti-social behaviour has been falling and falling since the introduction of Asbos. Crucially, it is falling fastest in the areas with the most Asbos. The people who say Blair's karaoke take on the diva has made no difference are, I'm afraid, wilfully ignoring the evidence.

But the respect agenda is troubling at first, because it is represents an innovation in basic - and treasured - legal concepts. As Tony Blair admits, it "lessens the burden of proof" for punishing these minor but life-wrecking offences - a phrase that sets alarm bells ringing in the mind of any decent person. Why do we need to lessen the burden of proof? Surely what those kids were doing is already illegal? Blair explains, "In practice, the person who spits at the old lady on the street is not prosecuted because to do so takes many police hours, much resources and even if all of that is overcome, the outcome is a fine. The result is the police do not think it worth it; so it does not happen."

That's the problem. For minor-but-disturbing offences in complex urban societies, the law has simply stopped functioning. If you are against Asbos, you have to explain to the residents of my cousin's estate how you have a better way of dealing with their problem - and I can't see one. Of course, in the long term you need to deal with the causes of these crimes. But you can't say to a woman who is being woken up at 3am by teenagers emptying the estate's wheelie bins on to her front lawn that she will have to wait until the Government has broken the cycle of deprivation.

Remember: Asbos are not arbitrary. They have to be tested in a magistrates' court, where - in the words of Asbo-opponent, the super-smart Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty - it has to be proven "to a high standard (in effect a criminal one) that the individual has engaged in past anti-social behaviour". You have the right of appeal after that. And the punishments laid down are hardly tough if you really have been falsely accused: don't visit this part of the estate; don't film through your neighbour's window; don't howl like a wolf at 4am. (These are real Asbo orders). The burden of proof is lower because the punishment itself is lower - is a ban on howling like a wolf so terrible if you aren't inclined to do it?

But there is, nonetheless, a very real problem with the wider government strategy: up to now, it has been painfully lop-sided. It is absolutely right to introduce Asbos to stop the immediate crisis, but that can only ever be a first step. When a child or teenager has been given an Asbo, it is an early warning sign of a disturbed person. They need to be flooded with assistance to turn their lives around.

Today, that isn't happening. I sought out some of the lads who had been Asboed on my cousin's estate to see what had become of them. One seems to have gone straight, working in a local garden centre and dismissing his earlier behaviour as "just bullshit", admitting in a mumble that the Asbo "probably helped" him break out of the intoxicating cycle he was in. But another now hangs around with kids on the next estate down, where his mum admits he is "doing exactly the same stuff". Although he is 15, he has effectively not been in school since he was 12. He is one of the 10,000 children in Britain permanently excluded from school, seen by a teacher just a few afternoons a week, if at all.

At the moment, local authorities don't even have to identify all the children like this who are missing from their school rolls. Why wasn't the Asbo a screeching signal to get this child into education, before he is booted on to the job market illiterate, innumerate and enraged?

True, the Government is introducing some measures that try to cut to the roots of these problems. In 2001, the British Medical Journal studied all the ways to stop aggressive, disturbed kids turning into violent young adults, and found that getting parents into proper, well-funded parenting classes had by far the best results.

I sometimes take my nephews to play in a park on the edge of the estate where they live, and I often see the same distraught teenage mother screaming "Shut up! Shut up! You're doing my head in!" at her toddler whenever it cries. Of course all parents lose it sometimes, but this happens every day. The toddler is getting more and more disturbed and aggressive to other kids, and the mother is getting more and more furious. Does the Liberal Democrat leadership contender Mark Oaten really think that offering free parenting classes to girls like this is "the nanny state gone mad?" If this is the Tory rhetoric he has to offer, then jump into the race Simon Hughes, the water's disturbingly blue.

But these positive, preventative measures are given precious little cash compared to the Sun-pleasing police measures. The government hums one part of Aretha's tune very well - "sock it to em/sock it to em/sock it to em" - and if you lived on my cousin's estate, you'd be bloody glad they do. But we also need to hear the next part of her tune, when she promises to "give all of her money" and "kisses sweeter than honey". Prime Minister Franklin - your work has only just begun.

j.hari@independent.co.uk