Browse

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) was a major preoccupation of New Labour's project of social and political renewal, with Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) a controversial addition to crime and disorder management powers. Thought by some to be a dangerous extension of the power to criminalise, by others as a vital dimension of local governance, there remains a concerning lack of evidence as to whether or not they compound social exclusion. This collection brings together opinion, commentary, research evidence, professional guidance, debate and critique in order to understand the phenomenon of anti-social behaviour. It considers the earliest available evidence in order to evaluate the British government's ASB strategy, debates contrasting definitions of ASB and examines policy and practice issues affected by it. Chapters ask what the recent history of ASB governance tells us about how the issue will develop to shape public and social policies in the years to come.

Anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) have become the main sanction for dealing with anti-social behaviour in the United Kingdom. This book provides one of the first assessments of this sanction, which has become widely used but remains extremely controversial. The report is based on detailed interviews with ASBO recipients, practitioners and community representatives in areas affected by anti-social behaviour. Examining its use and impact from these various perspectives, the book assesses the effects of ASBOs on the behaviour and attitudes of recipients and analyses the various issues which arise in relation to their implementation.

Over the last decade, the reformed youth justice system has seen increases in the numbers of children and young people in custody, a sharp rise in indeterminate sentences and the continuing deaths of young prisoners. The largest proportion of funding in youth justice at the national level is spent on providing places for children and young people remanded and sentenced to custody. The publication of the Youth Crime Action Plan during 2008 and the increasing emphasis on early intervention provides a framework to consider again the interface between local services and secure residential placements. This report brings together contributions from leading experts on young people and criminal justice to critically examine current policy and practice. There are vital questions for both policy and practice on whether the use of custody reduces re-offending or whether other forms of residential placements are more effective long-term. The report looks at current approaches to the sentencing and custody of children and young people, prevention of re-offending and a range of alternative regimes.

This book explores the importance of social identities when considering crime, victimisation and criminal justice. Offering a refreshing perspective on equality and diversity developments that feature in the policies and practices of criminal justice agencies, it critically examines ‘race’ relations legislation, ‘race’ equality and criminal justice gender, crime and victimisation, the increasing role that faith communities play in community justice, hate crimes committed against individuals motivated by prejudice, community engagement and participation in criminal justice, community cohesion and civil renewal. The book incorporates a broad theoretical focus, exploring identity theory, late modernity, identity constructions, communities and belongingness. It also raises important theoretical and methodological issues that a focus upon social identities poses for the subject discipline of criminology.

This book represents the first full-length critical and interdisciplinary assessment of Loïc Wacquant's work in English. Wacquant's challenging critique of the neo-liberal government of crime and the punitive culture has recently shaken mainstream criminology to its foundations. In a bold political analysis he describes how the US-led revolution in law and order has dismantled the welfare state, replacing it with a disciplinary and penal state. Wacquant's analysis details the spread of neo-liberal crime control measures and the underpinning ‘pornographic’ discourses of crime across the developed world, although critics have questioned the extent to which this model of criminal justice really is gaining the worldwide dominance alleged. Written by criminologists and policy analysts, the book offers a critical but constructive application of Wacquant's ideas. The contributors welcome the opportunity presented by Wacquant's work to re-engage with a radical politics of law and order, criminalisation and marginality, whilst raising issues of gender, resistance, conflict and history which, they argue, help to enrich and further develop Wacquant's analyses and the discipline of criminology itself. The book concludes with a chapter from Professor Wacquant responding to the commentaries upon his work. It fills an important gap in the existing literature and will be exciting reading for academics and students of criminology, social policy and the social sciences more broadly.

This book is about the ways in which the governance of illicit drug use shapes female dependent drug users’ lives. It argues female drug users’ subjectivities, and hence their experiences, are shaped and regulated by drug policies. The relationship between the social regulation of female drug users and the “making up” of their identities is investigated. It explores the dominant governmental technologies of power from which the key constructions of women as “problematic” drug users emanate in the UK, Canada and the US: punishment and prohibition, medicalisation and welfarisation. It also investigates the meanings that women who identify as having dependent drug use attach to their drug use and themselves. Insights are gathered from the in-depth accounts of 40 female drug users in the UK. The book argues, in the regulation of illicit drug using women, particular subjectivities are constructed which, in themselves, become part of the narrative sustaining women in their problematic drug use. It asserts that female users experience drug policy as something that exacerbates their social and economic marginalisation and contributes to their lives being plunged into further marginalisation. At the same time, it analyses the contradictory choices, adaptations and resistances of female users. Although women users internalise many of the negative constructions of them found in policy discourse they also find ways to resist them. Popular misconceptions of female users which condition oppressive interventions are subverted with the hope of contributing to the formulation of drug policies based on empowerment, gender equity and social justice.

The impression often conveyed by the media about hate crime offenders is that they are hate-fuelled individuals who, in acting out their extremely bigoted views, target their victims in premeditated violent attacks. Scholarly research on the perpetrators of hate crimes has begun to provide a more nuanced picture. However, the preoccupation of researchers with convicted offenders neglects the vast majority of hate crime offenders that do not come into contact with the criminal justice system. This book widens understanding of hate crime by demonstrating that many offenders are ordinary people who offend in the context of their everyday lives. The book takes a victim-centred approach to explore and analyse hate crime as a social problem, providing an empirically informed and scholarly perspective. The book draws out the connections between the individual agency of offenders and the background structural context for their actions. It adds a new dimension to the debate about criminalising hate in light of concerns about the rise of punitive and expressive justice, scrutinising the balance struck by hate crime laws between the rights of offenders and the rights of victims.

Restorative justice (RJ) and restorative approaches (RAs) are becoming increasingly valued as a way of responding to a wide range of conflicts, including problem behaviour and offending behaviour. The growth in the use of RJ and RAs has been described as a ‘global social movement’ that sets out to repair harm, reduce conflict and harmonise civil society. This report takes a close look at the implementation of an RJ approach in the challenging environment of children's residential care homes.

Desistance is one of the big news stories of the criminological world. Research suggests that, as ‘offenders’ turn their backs on crime, they often change their identities as well as their behaviour. Yet we know much less about how reforming or transforming identity might be affected by gender, age or ethnicity. This book focuses on diversity and showcases research from a wide range of authors in the field. It considers the similarities and differences between desisting from crime and recovering from addiction. Taking the desistance and recovery debates in unfamiliar directions, it examines the experiences of change for individuals seeking healthier and more successful futures.

Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPAs) are now one of the central features of government policy in the United Kingdom for managing the risk presented by violent and sexual offenders. Although there has been research and debate concerning the use of MAPPAs with adult offenders, their application to young people has received relatively little attention until now. This book extends the existing literature on public protection. It provides a detailed exploration of MAPPA policy and practice in order to prompt further debate about the implications of the risk paradigm for young people and youth justice practitioners. In the book, key academics, practitioners and policy makers consider a range of theoretical and practical issues raised by the introduction of MAPPA including risk and children's rights, the use of professional discretion by practitioners, alternative approaches to risk management, and suggestions for future policy development.

A great deal has been written about developing effective practice against a backdrop of rapid change in criminal justice services. Much of this is research-oriented and not always accessible to practitioners in their day-to-day work. This book changes that. Drawing on research and integrating this with practitioner experience, the book creates fresh, research-based ‘practice wisdom’ for engaging effectively with offenders. It explores issues of risk, responsivity and diversity in the context of work with specific offender- and offending-behaviour groups as a means to highlight those skills and understandings that can be used across the wider range of work environments. The book breaks down complex ideas to enable practical application, and each chapter includes questions for reflection and practice development. The book recognises that there are no instant solutions to changing offending behaviour, but provides a practice text that will encourage a sense of competence and confidence, enhancing readers' skill and enthusiasm when working with a broad spectrum of offenders.

The Youth Crime Action Plan, launched by the UK government in 2008, emphasises crime prevention and early intervention in different aspects of work with young people who offend or are considered to be ‘at risk’ of offending. Much of this approach includes targeted work with families and work to reduce the numbers of young people entering the youth justice system. This report takes a critical look at early intervention policies. Through contributions from leading experts on youth work and criminal justice, it considers the development of integrated and targeted youth support services and the implications for practice of early intervention policies; analyses the causes of serious violent crime through consideration of issues that address gangs and guns; provides an evaluation of the government's early intervention strategy through the examination of its Sure Start programme and other family initiatives; identifies the psychobiological effects of violence on children and links them to problem behaviour; considers the impacts of family intervention projects and parenting work and compares approaches to early intervention across different jurisdictions; and examines the lessons for practice in England and Wales.

The rise in a dominant risk paradigm focusing on public protection in criminal justice has seen the increased use of coercion to access treatment for people with substance misuse and mental health problems. This book explores the notions of risk and rehabilitation within the practice of court orders, and contextualises them within a comparative literature and research base. This timely book discusses these problems, highlighting criminal justice practice in relation to risk and rehabilitation. It will make crucial reading for academics and policy makers in criminology and criminal justice and those working with mental health/welfare groups.

Over recent years, the government focus on anti-social behaviour has been replaced by a focus on respect. Tony Blair's ‘Respect Action Plan’ was launched in January 2006, Gordon Brown spoke of ‘duty, responsibility, and respect for others’, and the Conservatives have launched their ‘Real Respect Agenda’. Within government, the respect agenda has a cross-departmental influence, but like anti-social behaviour before it, ‘respect’ has not yet been tightly defined. And what is it about the contemporary UK that sees respect as lacking, that in order to tackle anti-social behaviour we first need to ‘secure respect’? Until now, there has been little attention in the academic and policy literature on the government's push for respect. This book contains ten chapters from leading academics in the field that consider the origins, current interpretations and possible future for the Respect Agenda. The chapters explore various policy and theoretical discourses relating to ‘respect’, behavioural expectations and anti-social behaviour. The book follows the five key themes of: respect in context; young people and children; communities and families; city living; and issues of identity and values.

The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in 2005 raised acute issues about operational practice, legitimacy, accountability and policy making regarding police use of fatal force. It dramatically exposed a policy, referred to popularly as ‘shoot to kill’, which came not from Parliament but from the non-statutory ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers). This book unravels these often misunderstood matters with a fresh look at firearms practice and policy in a traditionally ‘unarmed’ police service.

This book is a response to controversial proposals for prisons and sentencing set out in by Lord Patrick Carter's ‘Review of Prisons’, published in 2007. The Carter review proposed the construction of vast ‘Titan’ prisons to deal with the immediate problem of prison overcrowding, the establishment of a Sentencing Commission as a mechanism for keeping judicial demand for prison places in line with supply, along with further use of the private sector, including private-sector management methods. The book comprises nine chapters by academic experts, who expose these proposals to critical scrutiny. Chapters take the Carter Report to task for construing the problems too narrowly, in terms of efficiency and economy, and for failing to understand the wider issues of justice that need addressing. They argue that the crisis of prison overcrowding is first and foremost a political problem – arising from penal populism – for which political solutions need to be found.

New Zealand was the first country in the world to decriminalise all sectors of sex work. This book looks its experience of decriminalisation. It provides first-hand views and experiences of this policy from the point of view of those involved in the sex industry, as well as people involved in developing, implementing, researching, and reviewing the policy. The book presents an example of radical legal reform in an area of current policy debate.

Although it is possible to trace a recent history of far reaching change in probation, the criminal justice system, and penal policy since the 1980s, it is of specific interest to excavate the period from 1997 to 2015. This is because new labour 1997-2010 modernised the criminal justice domain, followed by the era of coalition government that imposed profound transformations in the form of the rehabilitation revolution. The latter culminated in a proportion of probation work being privatised following the creation of 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies. This updated, revised, and largely re-written book constructs an extended theoretical grid to develop a more sophisticated and critical analysis of modernising incursions and transformational traumas under the politico-economic conditions of neoliberal capitalism. Accordingly, in 6 substantive chapters, the book makes an original and timely contribution to theoretical excavation and research in the criminal justice system. To achieve this objective, the book has been expanded to accommodate theoretical insights elicited from Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Foucault, Lacan and Žižek. Additionally, there is a distinctive religious and personalist tradition of considerable longevity that must be factored into this analysis. This is facilitated by refining the conceptual device of moral economy. A major strength of this revised and updated text is the refined theoretical framework to excavate a recent history of politically imposed modernisation and transformation, largely associated with the reconstruction of the probation system.