Margaret Malloch

‘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.

Responding to Young Runaways: Problems of Risk and Responsibility

This article examines responses to young runaways in Scotland. Based on the findings of a scoping study commissioned by the Scottish Coalition for Young Runaways, it highlights the challenges of defining young runaways and assessing the scale and nature of running away from home and substitute care. Specifically, the article critically considers constructions of ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ that have come to be applied to distinguish ‘genuine’ runaways from others and the problems this distinction creates for appropriate responses aimed at meeting the needs of all young people who run away.

Crime, critique and utopia

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors 1. Utopia and Its Discontents Margaret Malloch and Bill Munro 2. Crime, Critique and Utopian Alternatives Margaret Malloch 3. Utopia and Penal Constraint: The Frankfurt School and Critical Criminology Bill Munro 4. Erich Fromm: From Messianic Utopia to Critical Criminology Michael Lowy 5. Crime and Punishment In Classical and Libertarian Utopias Vincenzo Ruggiero 6. Visualising an abolitionist real utopia: principles, policy and praxis David Scott 7. Towards a Utopian Criminology Lynne Copson 8. Using the Future to Predict the Past: Prison Population Projections and the Colonisation of Penal Imagination Sarah Armstrong 9. Techno-Utopianism, Science Fiction and Penal Innovation: the case of Electronically Monitored Control Mike Nellis 10. From Penal Dystopia to the Reassertion of Social Rights Loic Wacquant

Not ‘Fragrant’ at all: Criminal Justice Responses to ‘Risky’ Women

Illegal drug use has been increasingly implicated in offending behaviour and can have adverse social consequences for the individuals who come to the attention of the criminal justice system. However, the consequences are particularly problematic for women, for whom the use of ‘hard drugs’ is considered highly inappropriate, if increasingly common. This paper will consider the ways in which women drug users are depicted as ‘risky’ women, and will highlight policy responses. It will examine the application of concepts of ‘responsibilization’ and consider how this is applied to women drug using offenders. The paper will examine the theoretical basis for the differential depiction of drug users on the basis of gender, and will critically analyse the consequences of this for women drug users throughout their contact with the criminal justice system and related service provisions.

Utopia and Its Discontents

Before the publication of More’s De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia Libellus Vere Aureus in 1516, the concept of Utopia was represented by the Latin verb ‘Nusquama’, meaning ‘nowhere’. More combined the Greek ou (no), transliterated into the Latin u, with the Greek topos (place), to create Utopia. Thomas More’s Utopia was both an imagined ‘no-place’ and a serious critique of the social evils of sixteenth century England (Bruce, 1999). By the end of the sixteenth century the adjectival form ‘utopian’ had been born1 and by the seventeenth century, ‘Utopia’ had made its way into other European languages (see Bacon, Cervantes and Shakespeare). Utopia was not only a poetic or imaginary place, but had come to denote general programmes and manifestos for ideal societies promoted by the authors directly (Milton, Leibniz) to be realised via political action (Manuel and Manuel, 1979). Following on from the original Utopia of Thomas More in 1516 up to the early twentieth century, a range of literary Utopias and utopian manifestos emerged, some presenting a vision of a new society; others presenting a blueprint for possibilities that could be applied in practice. While the term ‘Utopia’ came to cover a variety of meanings and interpretations that differed in content, form, political alignment and intention, one of the key characteristics of utopian politics lay in the imagining of political systems radically different from existing ones (Goodwin and Taylor, 1982; Jameson, 2005).

The Challenge of Developing and Sustaining a Recovery Group in Glasgow: Calton Athletic Recovery Group

This article will consider how Calton Athletic Recovery Group (CARG) defines and supports recovery and will examine the challenges inherent in setting up and sustaining a project that has a primary aim to „bring recovery into the community.” Based in the East end of Glasgow, the project was set up in 1985 as a football team and social group aimed at supporting and sustaining recovery from drug and alcohol problems. In the 25 years that CARG has been in existence, it has experienced highs and lows in terms of funding, resources, and wider support. The issues of sustainability and community identity are considered as experienced by the members of CARG.

Crime, Critique and Utopian Alternatives

Marie Louise Berneri, writing on Utopia, noted: Our age is an age of compromises, of half-measures, of the lesser evil. Visionaries are derided or despised, and ‘practical men’ rule our lives. We no longer seek radical solutions to the evils of society, but reforms; we no longer try to abolish war, but to avoid it for a period of a few years; we do not try to abolish crime, but are contented with criminal reforms; we do not try to abolish starvation, but to set up world-wide charitable organisations. (Berneri, 1982[1950]: 1)

Reconceptualising Custody: Rights, Responsibilities and ‘Imagined Communities’

Reconceptualising Custody draws on developments for women in prison in Scotland to consider the influence of ‘rights discourse’ in reorganising the penal estate. Locating these developments within an international context, the chapter explores the flexibility of concepts of ‘community’ in the repositioning of custody and in attempts to create ‘benevolent’ spaces within the prison system. The chapter argues that an individual model of rights within institutional spaces cannot address the factors that contribute to imprisonment, sustain processes of criminalisation and that continue to exert impact post-release. The tension between the potential for achieving radical change and the legitimation of the existing system is evident in the creation of apparently benevolent spaces within which women are incompatibly both punished and rehabilitated.