'Holistic' Community Punishment and Criminal Justice Interventions for Women

Calls for ‘holistic' responses to halt the increasing imprisonment of women are continually reiterated. Solutions are sought which aim to be both ‘gender-responsive' and ‘community-based'; however, the absence of meaningful definitions of ‘community' and ‘holistic' means that superficial responses are often put in place in response to failures of the system. Taking as an example one attempt to introduce a community-based service for women in Scotland, this article examines the challenges of implementing services that are located within ‘the community' and considers the consequences for feasible attempts to reduce the number of women in prison in Scotland and internationally

'Time Out' for Women: Innovation in Scotland in a Context of Change

The 218 Centre was set up following consistent concerns about the increasing number of women in prison in Scotland and the high-level needs of many of these women. It is an innovative and high profile attempt to develop appropriate responses to women in the criminal justice system. It offers women an opportunity for ‘time out’ of their normal environment without resorting to ‘time in’ custody, providing both residential and community-based services. This article outlines some of the issues and challenges which characterised the early development and operation of the 218 Centre. It illustrates the ways in which some of the issues that arose during the evaluation resonate with current and ongoing debates within criminology and draws attention to the difficulties in using the criminal justice system to address other issues

Hunting and Shooting:The Ambiguities of ‘Country Sports’

An introduction to sports shooting as an aspect of animal abuse and the criminal, social and environmental harms - direct, indirect and collateral - associated with the field sports shooting industry

Is Scotland a Westminster-style Majoritarian Democracy or a Scandinavian-style Consensus Democracy? A Comparison of Scotland, the UK and Sweden

Peer reviewedPostprin

Promoting community renewable energy in a corporate energy world.

Small-scale, decentralized and community-owned renewable energy is widely acknowledged to be a desirable feature of low carbon futures, but faces a range of challenges in the context of conventional, centralized energy systems. This paper draws on transition frameworks to investigate why the UK has been an inhospitable context for community-owned renewables and assesses whether anything fundamental is changing in this regard. We give particular attention to whether political devolution, the creation of elected governments for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, has affected the trajectory of community renewables. Our analysis notes that devolution has increased political attention to community renewables, including new policy targets and support schemes. However, these initiatives are arguably less important than the persistence of key features of socio-technical regimes: market support systems for renewable energy and land-use planning arrangements that systemically favour major projects and large corporations, and keep community renewables to the margins. There is scope for rolling out hybrid pathways to community renewables, via joint ownership or through community benefit funds, but this still positions community energy as an adjunct to energy pathways dominated by large, corporate generation facilities

Challenges to and opportunities for improving mental health services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Ireland: a narrative account

The views and opinions of people who use mental health services are being increasingly acknowledged in relation to rights-based, socially-inclusive, and recovery-oriented care. However, little is known of the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in this respect. The aim of the present study was to explore the experiences and needs of LGBT people in relation to mental health services. The study was an exploratory design utilizing mixed methods. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using a survey instrument (n = 125) and in-depth semistructured interviews (n = 20) with a sample of people who had completed the survey. This paper will report on the findings from the interview data. The data were thematically analysed, and the main themes that emerged included accessing services, treatment choices, mental health service experiences, and other supports. The findings inform the discussion, and recommendations are made in terms of future mental health practice, education, and research

Welfare, equality and social justice: Scottish independence and the dominant imaginings of the 'New' Scotland

This paper focuses on the extent to which issues of equality, social justice and social welfare have been mobilised in the most prominent imaginings of an independent Scotland. Since 2011 the SNP Scottish Government has repeatedly argued that any future independent Scotland will be characterised by a strong commitment to a distinctively Scottish social welfarism. This paper explores the main tenets of such claims noting that while the myths of Scottish distinctiveness in this respect have long been critiqued, they remain central to the visions of what Scottish society is, and what it could become. Drawing on specific framings and understandings of Scotland’s past, leading SNP politicians have made claims that a new Enlightenment in Scotland could act as a ‘beacon’ for progressive policy-making across the rest of the UK and Europe. This new Enlightenment would be underpinned by the ethics of equality and social justice and the market and economic growth would be servants rather than drivers of social change. In critically exploring these claims to Scottish distinctiveness, this paper focuses on a particular area of social policy, childcare. It is argued that policy-making, as well as the SNP vision for the future, focus on areas of concern that have a lineage back to Enlightenment ideas – investing in childhood as a means to make a better society. It highlights the challenges of combining a market-driven childcare strategy with a social investment approach. The paper aims to promote a critical engagement with the unfolding ‘imaginary’ of any independent (or more devolved) Scottish society, a society in which a globally competitive economy can deliver important socially just goals