Michael Shiner

The legacy of ‘normalisation’: The role of classical and contemporary criminological theory in understanding young people's drug use

Since it began in the mid-1990s, the debate surrounding the normalisation of adolescent recreational drug use has attracted considerable attention and has tended to polarise opinion within the field. In this article two of the main protagonists in the debate come together to discuss its legacy. Focusing on the twin themes of continuity and change the authors begin by considering the relevance of early developments in the sociology of drug use, noting that this earlier work anticipated much that has recently been written on the subject, including the emphasis on hedonism and consumption in leisure lifestyles. From here they go on to critically reflect on the role that structure and agency have played in the normalisation debate, suggesting that the original thesis underplayed the role of structural influences in favour of a rational action model of adolescent drug use. In their more recent work, both authors have come to emphasise how drug use is shaped by an interplay between social structure and human agency. While some areas of disagreement remain, they agree that normalisation is best understood as a contingent process negotiated by distinct social groups operating in bounded situations.

Young People, Mentoring and Social Inclusion

Mentoring is the latest in a long line of interventions with disaffected young people that is believed to hold considerable promise. However, the expansion of mentoring schemes in recent years has been based more on faith in what are perceived to be the merits of the approach rather than on robust empirical evidence that mentoring actually brings about the benefits expected of it. This paper reports the results of the largest British study of mentoring to date. Built around a longitudinal survey and depth interviews with programme workers and participants, the research sought to measure the impact of a particular group of mentoring programmes. The evidence from the study suggests that the programmes were particularly successful in increasing young people’s involvement in education, training and work, but less successful in reducing offending. This is unsurprising, we argue, given that much of the core content of the programmes centred on education, training and work and contained relatively little activity focused on the avowed aim of reducing offending. Moreover the programmes were generally under-theorised, failing to provide an explicit model of how and why change was to be brought about. The danger for these and similar programmes is that they will be perceived to fail to deliver and, despite their promise, will become the latest ‘silver bullet’ to be talked up and then cast aside.

‘Why are you applying there?’: ‘race’, class and the construction of higher education ‘choice’ in the United Kingdom

Despite entering higher education in good numbers, candidates from some black and minority ethnic groups are concentrated in less prestigious institutions. A similar pattern is evident in candidates’ applications, raising important questions about the role of ‘self-exclusion’. Statistical analysis confirms that candidates from some minority ethnic groups tend to target lower-ranking institutions, but these differences are almost entirely explained by other variables, particularly academic attainment, type of school attended, number of A-levels taken and subject mix. It follows that some minority ethnic groups appear to be indirectly disadvantaged by patterns of schooling that do not prepare candidates for elite higher education. Similar processes are evident in relation to social class, although candidates from less privileged family backgrounds remain less likely to target high-status institutions even when other variables are taken into account.

University offer rates for candidates from different ethnic categories

Previous research suggested that candidates from some black and minority ethnic groups were less likely to receive an offer of a place from an ‘old’ university. These findings were disputed in a re-analysis carried out for HEFCE which found that only Pakistani candidates were significantly less likely to receive offers (from both ‘old’ and ‘new’ universities). In this paper we return to the question of ethnic differences in university offer rates, examining UCAS admissions data for 2008. We use a cross-classified multi-level modelling approach to predict the probability that applications from candidates from different ethnic groups will receive an offer. Controlling for variables seeking to capture the academic quality of applications we find significant differences between offer rates for different ethnic groups. Significantly lower offer rates remained for the main ethnic groups when social characteristics were also taken into account in the model (social class background, gender and school type). However, offer rates for candidates from mixed ethnic groups were not significantly different from those for white British candidates. Our analysis did not find evidence of differences in offer rates from higher and lower status institutions for black and minority ethnic candidates relative to white British applicants.

British Drug Policy and the Modern State: Reconsidering the Criminalisation Thesis

Recent developments in the drug field have prompted claims that criminal justice has displaced health from its formerly dominant position and have also been used to support general claims about the criminalisation of social policy. This article critically assesses such claims and offers an alternative interpretation, arguing that British drug policy has been shaped and reshaped by the broader workings of the modern state. Early controls reflected the influence of medicine and public health over emerging forms of state interventionism, while subsequent arrangements were consistent with the penal-welfare tradition that dominated criminal justice for much of the last century. More recently, it is the transformation of this tradition that has played a key role in reshaping the drug field, producing evidence of both continuity and change. What others have attributed to ‘criminalisation’, therefore, is said to reflect broader changes in the nature of criminal justice itself. Whilst the transformation of penal-welfarism helps to explain the development of more punitive and coercive forms of drug control, this is only part of the story. As with criminal justice more generally, the limitations of the sovereign state have given rise to various adaptive strategies and it is here that considerable continuity can be seen, particularly in relation to the on-going importance of drug treatment and harm reduction.

The Politics of the Powers

Stop and search is a prominent feature of policing, but has not always been so. When the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure reported in 1981, the law on stop and search was ‘confused and incoherent, having developed in an ad hoc manner’ based on a patchwork of local and national legislation (Sanders et al., 2010: 72). That there was little transparency about how these powers were deployed is evident from a report that appeared in The Times newspaper during the early 1970s, which noted that: ‘The Metropolitan Police… stated last week that no statistics were kept on searches because none were requested by the home secretary and the commissioner of police did not feel that they were of sufficient interest or importance’ (16 April 1973, quoted by Whitfield, 2009). As well as bringing some much-needed order to police powers of stop and search, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 requires officers to make a record of such encounters, providing the basis for some level of monitoring and scrutiny. Drawing largely on official statistics, this chapter charts the rise of stop and search under PACE and considers fluctuations in the use of some of the different powers. Attention is also given to what the powers are used for and on whom they are used, with a detailed discussion of debates surrounding the disproportionately high rate at which people from black and minority ethnic groups are stopped and searched.

Drug Use and Social Change

If, as Phillip Larkin (1990) declared, sexual intercourse began in 1963, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP, then one might be forgiven for thinking that drug use began in 1988, between the arrival of acid house and the introduction of the Criminal Justice Bill. The reality, of course, in both cases, is rather more prosaic. Larkin’s was a satirical, rather than literal, truth, which signified the changing sensibility of the time, whilst also, perhaps, parodying the exaggerated sense of self-importance that seems to imbue each new generation. Drug use did not begin in 1988 any more than sexual intercourse began in 1963 and the realities of the past should put us on guard against the construction of overly simplistic theoretical models. All too often, particularly in the wake of postmodern theory, social change is assessed on the basis of depthless, prefabricated versions of the past, giving rise to millenarian visions of a world turned upside down. By glossing over the complexities and nuances of earlier times, much that is now written and said about illicit drug use not only exaggerates the extent and pace of change, but also loses sight of some important lessons from the past.

Lessons for Prevention

Our aim in writing this book was to disseminate both the method and the findings of the sociological autopsy study. We begin this final chapter by summarising what we see as the book’s contribution and then we address the question of suicide prevention, including the ways in which our sociological autopsy study can potentially inform prevention.

New deviancy theory and the healthcare system's role in creating, labeling, and facilitating unauthorized prescription drug “abuse”

Background: ‘New’ deviancy theories came to prominence during the 1960s and presented a significant challenge to established ways of thinking about crime, delinquency and other forms of rule-breaking. These theories dismissed the idea that there is a distinct, unambiguously deviant minority whose behavior can be explained as a result of individual pathology or social dysfunction. Instead, it was argued that deviance involves meaningful and goal-oriented behavior, which can only be understood through an appreciative stance that is committed to faithful understanding of the world as seen by the subject. Methods and Aims: This paper focuses on the application of ‘new’ deviancy theories to the progression from medically appropriate prescription drug use to extra-medical ‘abuse’. Special consideration is given to the role of the prescribing physician and the medical institution. Conclusions: ‘New’ deviancy theories lend valuable insights into contemporary patterns of unauthorized prescription drug use. They bring to light the role of the physician-patient interaction as a mechanism to diagnose ‘misuse’ by searching for use of neutralization techniques, and for its function in facilitating future ‘abuse’ by guiding a patient through the learned steps to become a regular user. They highlight the importance of values in a patient’s choice to accept medications with psychoactive side effects, and they reinforce the subjectivity in diagnosis and labeling misuse. These theories illustrate the complexities of the interplay between social welfare support, disability, societal norms and self-identity, which are all critical parts of the patient experience. Finally, these concepts help generate hypothesis about the development of meaningful subcultural groups based around this type of behavior. An appreciation of drug ‘abuse’ through this historical framework can inform new approaches for drug policy aimed at reducing narcotic drug abuse.

Regulation and Reform

The general democratic principle that police can intervene in the lives of citizens only under limited and carefully controlled circumstances (Marx, 2001) has significant implications for stop and search. As a coercive power, stop and search impinges on what the late Bernie Grant, former member of parliament for Haringey, described as the ‘fundamental right’ to ‘walk the streets’, raising important questions of liberty, fairness and equality (see NACRO, 1997: 3). Concerns about procedural justice focus on the quality of such encounters and the way negative experiences serve to undermine people’s trust and confidence in the police, potentially fuelling a more general sense of alienation (see Chapter 6). Distributive justice, on the other hand, concentrates on who it is that is stopped and searched, raising particular concerns about the disproportionate focus on black and minority ethnic groups and the potential for discrimination. Although stop and search operates at the shallow end of the criminal justice system, it has important knock-on effects, helping to define who gets caught in the net, driving ethnic disparities at later stages of the process (May et al., 2010; Eastwood et al., 2013). Potential inequalities and injustices in the use of stop and search, therefore, are important not just in and of themselves, but because of the way they reverberate throughout the system.