Blame Eddie Eccles. The 16-year-old, who bit a policeman's leg during a year-long campaign of terror, has long been credited as the inspiration for Jack McConnell's "war on neds".

The former first minister rushed to Alva in Clackmannanshire, the home town of Eccles, when the youngster was banned by a sheriff from visiting much of central Scotland.

It was 2003 and Labour voters on the doorsteps were telling their MSPs they were sick of the kind of youth and gang disorder that Eccles personified.

Cue the Antisocial Behaviour Act of 2004, and new powers for the police and other authorities to tag under-16s and break up groups of youngsters, in gang-ridden areas like Alva, with so-called dispersal orders.

Its main target: persistent young offenders. There was just one snag: youth crime did not go down, it went up.

Yesterday, Scotland's SNP-led government signalled that at least some of Labour's "Asbo" legislation would be dismantled. Fergus Ewing, the Minister for Community Safety, said the act was "making a real difference to the quality of people's lives" but qualified this as being "in some areas". Now, he said, the time had come for a review.

Academics have long questioned whether all the measures, however well-meaning, have worked. Take dispersal orders. Ask most people in areas hit by youth unrest and they will tell you the orders are a blessing. One of the first was imposed in Sauchie, not far from Alva. Dingwall, Mid Calder, and several parts of Glasgow have seen moves under the act to prevent young people congregating.

There have been 16 dispersal orders in all, far fewer than Mr McConnell would have liked when he visited Alva after Eccles and his friends ran, by their own admission, riot.

Researchers, however, have not been impressed by dispersal orders.

Last month, Leeds University published a study into the orders, and concluded: "Dispersal orders undermine relations between police and young people. Young people in the dispersal areas believed the powers were unjustified and discriminatory. They resented the fact that the powers prevented them from engaging socially with their friends simply based on their presence in a designated area."

Surely the orders offered some respite to communities under seige? Sometimes, yes. But not always for long. "In some dispersal areas, the problems returned as soon as the powers ended," said the researchers.

When the orders did work, it may have been because authorities backed them up with "diversionary activities"- good old-fashioned youth work to get young people off the streets.

Yesterday, Mr Ewing was signalling he was more interested in diversion than dispersal. He made his announcement during a visit to an early intervention project for troubled families in Edinburgh.

The minister said: "Dispersal was seen as most appropriate when used as part of wider work involving local authority services such as mediation, diversionary activity, and also parental support, such as that provided at the project I'm visiting.

"Building on the various pieces of research, the review will help us develop a fuller understanding of the different local approaches, to identify where improvements are most needed, and which solutions can best deliver for communities who for too long have suffered from antisocial behaviour.

"We're committed to promoting positive social behaviour as well as punishing and tackling the bad - but let's be clear, one must go equally with the other.

In all of this, the government's aim is to instill a culture of personal responsibility that must be at the heart of safe, strong communities."

Dispersal orders are not the only new measures in the 2004 Act that, while populist, have not been very popular. Only 11 antisocial behaviour orders - civil court orders which criminalise those who breach them - have been granted against children aged between 12 and 15.

Mr McConnell in his last months in power was scathing of councils and other bodies reluctant to reach for Asbos, endorsing the "name and shame" tactics vigorously pursued in English cities like Manchester. Such moves, however, ran against the grain of Scottish youth justice, where child offenders routinely enjoy anonymity.

Mr Ewing's review will also scrutinise new teams of community wardens being developed across the country, often to very different models.

His review was welcomed by Cosla, the body which represents councils, the authorities responsible for enacting many of the powers in the act.

Harry McGuigan, the councillor who speaks for Cosla on community safety, stressed the need to focus on "early intervention" and "prevention", two buzzwords that appear to be back in vogue. He said: "This is a useful chance to evaluate how the two spheres of government at a national and local level, along with local agencies and communities, can work together more effectively to address this pernicious issue that can blight the lives of people in our local communities."

The police said addressing antisocial behaviour was a priority and described the measures in the act as "effective tools". But Norma Graham, spokeswoman for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland on antisocial behaviour, was also eager to stress that prevention was better than cure.

Ms Graham, who is deputy chief constable of Fife Constabulary, said: "While police play a pivotal role, it is only through the close engagement with, and the significant contributions made by, the Scottish Government and our key community planning partners, that we are able to secure the desired outcomes - engagement and intervention playing as strong a role as enforcement."

And Eccles? In 2005, he was praised by a sheriff for getting his life back together. His ban from Alva has been lifted.

"I'm going straight," he told reporters. "I've turned my back on all the criminal stuff and I just want to get on with my life."

All that without so much as an Asbo to his name.