FOR many years, Philip Howard evangelized shoppers in London's Oxford Street, urging them to reject the devil and "be a winner, not a sinner." Wind and rain did not silence him; nor did insults or entreaties to turn down his megaphone. But last week the devil scored a temporary victory over Howard, in the form of an Anti-Social Behavior Order (ASBO).

Why has only one country launched a crusade against it? One reason is language. No other country has a term quite as all-encompassing as "anti-social behaviour," which has been used to label everything from drunken violence to flyer posting.

Germany has "asozial" behaviour, but that is a tricky tag because it is associated with totalitarian attempts to define who is part of society and who is not, according to Johannes Feest, a Bremen criminologist.