Journeys through managing the unknowable: making decisions about dangerous patients and prisoners with severe personality disorder

Historically we have not known how to respond to offenders with personality disorder. In many respects all we have done is contain them, but this has failed to keep a hold of our anxieties. The Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) Programme and four high security hospital and prison units for men have been developed in an attempt to reduce uncertainty and to help us 'know' more. Drawing from the case records of DSPD patients and prisoners and interviews with Parole Board (PB) and Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT) members this thesis explores how the journeys of patients and prisoners prior to and following DSPD admission are presented to the PB and MHRT, and how DSPD may impact on PB and MHRT decision-making. DSPD patients and prisoners share many similar characteristics, but following DSPD admission, some differences in their institutional responses can be identified. While the outcomes of PB and MHRT reviews with DSPD participants are different, the reviews serve many similar purposes. The uncertainty that surrounds DSPD disrupts PB and MHRT conceptions of what a normal journey through the criminal justice and/or mental health system looks like. We are not entirely certain who DSPD patients and prisoners have been, who they are, and who they may become. We do not know the extent to which DSPD treatment will reduce risk. Nor do we know how, or whether, DSPD patients and prisoners can progress to lower security facilities. Paradoxically, what we do know about DSPD, and the precautionary logic that structures DSPD, may serve to heighten our anxieties. It is this problematic terrain for decision-making, and journeys through managing the unknowable that this thesis explores

Student motivations for studying criminology: a narrative inquiry

The number of students studying criminology at university has significantly increased. Yet, criminology students have been all but ignored in research, despite being key stakeholders and ambassadors in the criminological enterprise. Drawing on the analysis of twelve in-depth interviews, we explore why students are motivated to study criminology and how these motivations are linked to their past experiences and future aspirations. Using a narrative inquiry, three types of stories emerged through our analysis: stories about (1) building on existing interests; (2) understanding the 'self'; and (3) securing 'justice' and ‘helping’ others. The stories students tell about their exposure to ‘crime’ help motivate their decision to study criminology, while their engagement with the discipline, enables them to make sense of these previous experiences and of themselves

‘A very high price to pay?’: Transforming rehabilitation and short prison sentences for women

Significant increases to the prison population in England and Wales during the last twenty years have generated concerns about the over-use of imprisonment, particularly for women and those serving a short sentence. In 2010, major changes to the criminal justice system were proposed by the coalition government, including the introduction of new Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and a ‘Payment by Results’ (PbR) scheme whereby financial rewards are given for reducing levels of reoffending (MoJ, 2010; 2013h; 2013i). Other significant developments in the new Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) agenda (MoJ, 2013h; 2013i) include the introduction of resettlement prisons, “through the gate” services and statutory supervision for short sentence prisoners after release. Drawing from the findings of an interview survey of twenty-five short sentence women prisoners and prison staff, this chapter provides an overview of the short term imprisonment of women in England and Wales.1 Key areas of the TR reforms are explored and the chapter concludes by considering the risks and opportunities they may present for women sentenced to, or eligible for, a short prison sentence

Continued and intensified hostility: the problematisation of immigration in the UK Government’s 2021 ‘New Plan for Immigration’

Drawing on Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ framework, this paper provides a critical analysis of HM Government’s (2021a) New Plan for Immigration. We explore how immigration is problematised, the assumptions that underlie these problematisations, alternative ways of representing the ‘problem’ of immigration, and the possible effects of the proposed reforms. Our paper demonstrates how the New Plan is increasingly hostile towards, not only ‘illegal’ migrants, but an ever-widening group of people and organisations who may be viewed as facilitating illegal entry (organised criminals, hauliers) and/or those held responsible for preventing/delaying their removal (lawyers). The government’s proposals risk creating a two-tiered system, increasing the exclusion experienced by those seeking asylum, and widening the net of those held responsible for immigration control. Ultimately, we conclude that while the sentiments behind the government’s New Plan may not be all that ‘new’, they are nevertheless significant for their continuation and intensification of existing hostile policies and practices relating to immigration in the UK. This is especially so, given a number of recent global events that could have provided an opportunity to disrupt the government’s problematisation of, and hostility towards, people seeking refuge

Everybody knows that the prisoner is going nowhere: Parole Board members’ views about dangerous and severe personality disorder in England and Wales

The Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) Programme has been a controversial initiative in England and Wales. First introduced in 1999, DSPD became a highly contested operational as opposed to diagnostic term, used to define a population convicted of violent offences who were admitted for treatment within one of four high security units established for men. The aim of this paper is to explore the outcomes of Parole Board (PB) reviews with DSPD prisoners and investigate PB members’ views about DSPD. Nearly all PB members observed that the high security location of the DSPD units was more influential to their decision-making than the label of DSPD. PB members highlighted their expectation that DSPD prisoners make a journey through different levels of security before release is an appropriate consideration. A key finding was that admission to DSPD services could be seen to have disrupted a prisoner’s progression and challenged PB members’ conceptions of the appropriate (and likely) future progression pathways available to prisoners. These findings have implications not only for the development of the new offender personality disorder pathway in England and Wales but also for other jurisdictions seeking to respond to the longstanding question of how to respond to high risk offenders with personality disorder

‘Keeping a lid on it’: exploring ‘problematisations’ of prescribed medication in prisons in the UK

Background: The non-medical use of prescription medication and risk of diversion have become policy and practice concerns within prison settings in the UK. These issues have been highlighted by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (2019) prison drugs strategy. In 2019, new prescribing guidance was issued by the Royal College of General Practitioners for clinicians working within prison settings. Methods: Informed by Bacchi's (2009) What's the problem represented to be? framework, the ways in which the ‘problem’ of prescribed medication in prisons have been represented is interrogated through an analysis of the prescribing guidance framework for clinicians working in prisons. Results: Restrictive prescribing practices are recommended as a solution to the ‘problem’ of diversion and misuse of prescribed medication. Prescribers are advised to consider de-prescribing, non-pharmacological treatments and alternative prescriptions with less diversionary potential. They are represented as responsible for the ‘problems’ that prescribed medication bring to prisons. The guidance is underpinned by the assumption that prescribers lack experience, knowledge and skills in prison settings. People serving prison sentences are assumed to be ‘untrustworthy’ and their symptoms treated with suspicion. This representation of the ‘problem’ has a number of effects including the possibility of increasing drug-related harm, damaging the patient-doctor relationship and disengagement from healthcare services. Conclusion: The representation of prescribed medication as problems of diversion and prescribing practices inhibits alternative representations of the problem which would inform different policy directions including improvements to regime and healthcare provision and would include a range of practitioners in prison settings to address the ‘problem’ more holistically

Law and Economics

Prior to 1960, most North American law schools paid attention only to anti-trust, public utility regulation, and perhaps tax policy from a law and economics perspective (sometimes referred to as the old law and economics). However, beginning in the early 1960\u27s with pioneering articles by Guido Calabresi on tort law and Ronald Coase (the 1991 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics) on property rights, followed by prolific writings and a comprehensive text by Richard Posner on a vast range of legal issues, the field of law and economics has burgeoned with many lawyers and economists around the world now exploring the economic implications of almost every aspect of the legal system. The new law and economics is often as much interested in non-market as market behaviour to which the old law and economics largely confined itself. This development has been accompanied by the initiation of a number of specialized law and economics oriented scholarly journals, and the appointment or cross-appointment of professional economists to the faculties of many North American law schools. The law schools at the University of Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Virginia, Stanford, George Mason, Northwestern, and Berkeley have particularly strong concentrations of scholars in various aspects of law and economics. In Canada, the Law and Economics Programme at the University of Toronto Law School was founded in 1976. Currently six scholars in the Law School have major interests in law and economics, and four economists are cross-appointed to the Faculty

Critiques of the Limits of Freedom of Contract: A Rejoinder

This rejoinder to the foregoing critiques of the author\u27s book, The Limits of Freedom of Contract, focuses on several themes: a) what range of contractually-related issues do courts possess the requisite institutional competence to address? b) whether problematic normative issues in contract law are amenable to rational analysis and at least provisional resolution, or are inherently indeterminate, contingent, and political? c) what the value of individual autonomy implies in terms of the type of transactions parties should be permitted to engage in? d) whether an internal rather than consequentialist theory of contract law is conceivable? and e) whether autonomy values are inconsistent with welfare values in women\u27s participation in market activities

The Social Insurance-Deterrence Dilemma of Modern North American Tort Law: A Canadian Perspective on the Liability Insurance Crisis

This Article surveys the trends in the United States and Canadian tort systems and discusses how they have impacted American and Canadian liability insurance markets. A major thesis of this Article is that the changing complexion of the United States tort system, paralleled by similar trends in Canada, explains many of the recent problems in availability, affordability and adequacy of liability insurance. Changes in parameters of liability and quantum of damage have made it increasingly difficult for insurers to price various types of risks. In particular, the author argues that attempts to pursue deterrence objectives and compensation (social insurance) objectives simultaneously through the tort system entail irresolvable contradictions that have destabilized the system and its associated private insurance arrangements