Making drug harms: Punishments for drugs offenders who pose risks to children

Images of children are routinely used in discourses on drugs, offering a compelling rationale for adopting particular policy positions or legislative reforms. However, the importance of childhood to the constitution of drug harms, and the punishment and subjectification of drug users and offenders, have rarely been the subject of enquiry, whether within drug and alcohol studies, criminology or legal studies. Scholarship on criminal sentencing in England and Wales is also relatively sparse, and has been dominated by analyses of the ‘legal-rational’ logic of particular provisions or reforms. This paper, which relies on the premise that drugs and their effects are constituted through discourse, and are thus contingent, variable and unstable, identifies the ‘collateral realities’ (Law, 2011) that are enacted during legislative and judicial attempts to stabilize the harms caused by drugs to children and communities

Law, necropolitics and the stop and search of young people

Stop and search can harm young people, damage relations between police and the community and alienate ethnic and racial minorities. In Mohidin and another v Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis and others, a group of minors who had been stopped, searched and, in some cases, falsely imprisoned, assaulted and racially abused by officers, were awarded damages for the distress and pain suffered. In this article, the case will be read not for the tortious legal consequences of police actions towards youth, or members of the public in general, nor for the culpability of any of the parties concerned, but for how the use of ‘lawful’ police powers on young people was framed and justified by both officers and the courts. It is argued that the punitive function of such powers has been underexplored by criminologists, and that the authorization and legitimization of such tactics, routinely defended as a ‘necessary’ crime prevention tool, can be understood as an instantiation of ‘necropolitics’

The stop and search of minors: A 'vital police tool'?

Police stop and search powers have been widely criticized for the disproportionate manner in which members of black and ethnic minority communities are targeted. However, the use of such powers on minors in England and Wales has largely escaped comment, despite good evidence that such practices are harmful and counter-productive. Whilst data on the stop and search of under-10s and even toddlers has been reasonably widely reported by the mass media, there has been little interest in the welfare of older children who are subject to such police powers. Drawing on police data, qualitative research and information obtained through Freedom of Information requests, this article considers the relationship between potentially corrosive stop and search practices, young people’s use of public space and the question of vulnerability. It is concluded that policy and practice around the use of such powers should be amended to take account of the specific needs of individuals under the age of 18, and that children’s welfare should be a central consideration

Dangerous drugs, dangerous mothers: Gender, responsibility and the problematisation of parental substance use

If, as many would have it, the ‘drugs problem’ is among the more perilous and uncompromising challenges of our times, parental substance misuse represents one of its most insidious expressions. The past 15 years has seen the ‘hidden harms’ experienced by the children of drug users emerge as a principal concern for national policy actors and local service provision. However, there has been relatively little critique of the assumptions and epistemological foundations underscoring this policy shift, or of the preoccupation with the ‘family’ in drug policy in general. Through examination of seminal policy documents relating to parental substance misuse, and using Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) approach, this article attends more closely to the formulation of parental drug use as a significant policy problem, and to the family as a principal site for the constitution of drug harms

Parental substance use as a child protection problem: a poststructural interview analysis

The use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) by parents is a significant public policy concern, both in the UK and other jurisdictions such as Australia. Concern about the potential risks posed to children is also paramount in family court decisions, where AOD consumption is framed as a child protection issue in itself. There is a need, however, for more critical inquiry into the ways in which parental use is understood and conceptualised in family court practice. Based on interviews with social workers, lawyers and judges who have worked in Family Courts in England and Wales, the aim of this paper is to pay closer attention to the constitution of parental substance use as a child protection problem. Using methodological tools devised by Bonham and Bacchi (2016), and adopting their poststructural approach to interview analysis, the aim was to pay close attention to the ways in which “reality” was made in and through participant accounts. The focus on the granularity of what, precisely, was said in the interviews unveiled some valuable insights into the ways in which parental subject positions were produced and maintained. For example, the ‘traumatised’ parental substance user was a recurring motif which, while rooted in a more empathetic understanding of the challenges faced by parents, could – I suggest – have unintended consequences

Who is the addict-offender? A historical ontology

The relationship between addiction and crime, and the political preoccupation with the addict-offender, has been the source of some academic commentary. However, most of this research assumes that the concept of ‘addiction’ – however determined – is a relatively stable and uniform one, focusing for example on the links between an addict's capacity and their liability for offending prior to sentencing. In this article, a novel approach, rooted in the turn to ontology in social theory, is brought to bear on addiction as a criminal concern. It involves a historical study of reported sentencing decisions in which judges attempt to stabilise the notion of the addict-offender. The findings point to both continuity and change in criminal framings of addiction over time, exposing differences in approaches to alcohol compared with other drugs. They also suggest that the dominance of questions about capacity when it comes to apportioning responsibility to the addict-offender neglects the importance of concerns about character and risk to decision-making practices