Stuart Taylor

'The worst tax form you've ever seen'? Probation officers' views about OASys

Classification with regard to their risk/needs has become an increasingly significant aspect of work with offenders generally. In England and Wales, the Offender Assessment System (OASys) used by the National Probation Service has a key role to play in effective practice. OASys is the latest in a series of such assessment tools, but despite considerable care taken over its development, users’ views about its efficacy have not been explored. This article reports the results of the first national survey of Probation Officers’ views about OASys. While a variety of concerns are noted - especially the time-consuming nature of completing an OASys assessment - and such concerns need to be addressed, on the whole, users are not opposed to OASys.

Prohibition, privilege and the drug apartheid: The failure of drug policy reform to address the underlying fallacies of drug prohibition:

It appears to be a time of turbulence within the global drug policy landscape. The historically dominant model of drug prohibition endures, yet a number of alternative models of legalization, decriminalization and regulation are emerging across the world. While critics have asserted that prohibition and the ensuing ‘war on drugs’ lack both an evidence base and legitimacy, reformers are embracing these alternatives as indicators of progressive change. This article, however, argues that such reforms adhere to the same arbitrary notions, moral dogma and fallacious evidence base as their predecessor. As such they represent the ‘metamorphosis of prohibition’, whereby the structure of drug policy changes, yet the underpinning principles remain unchanged. Consequentially, these reforms should not be considered ‘progressive’ as they risk further consolidating the underlying inconsistencies and contradictions that have formed the basis of drug prohibition.

Moving beyond the other: A critique of the reductionist drugs discourse

This paper uses the UK as a vehicle through which to argue that a dominant reductionist drugs discourse exists which simplifies understandings of drug use and drug users leading to socio-cultural misrepresentations of harm, risk and dangerousness. It contends that at the centre of this discourse lies the process of othering - the identification of specific substances and substance users as a threat to UK society. Interestingly, within the wider context of global drug policy reform this othering process appears to be expanding to target a wider variety of factors and actors - those policies, research findings and individuals which contest normative notions, resulting in the marginalisation of ‘alternative voices’ which question the entrenched assumptions associated with drug prohibition. The paper concludes that there is a need for collective action by critical scholars to move beyond the other, calling for academics to be innovative in their research agendas, creative in their dissemination of knowledge and resolute despite the threat of being othered themselves.

Transforming Rehabilitation during a penal crisis: A case study of Through the Gate services in a resettlement prison in England and Wales:

In 2013, the UK government published plans to radically reform resettlement provision for released prisoners via a Through the Gate scheme to be introduced as part of its Transforming Rehabilitation agenda. Under the scheme, 70 of the 123 prisons in England and Wales were re-designated ‘resettlement prisons’ and tasked with establishing an integrated approach to service delivery, seamlessly extending rehabilitative support from custody into the community. This article utilises a case study of one resettlement prison to critically consider the implementation of these new arrangements. Drawing on insights by prisoners, prison staff and other key stakeholders, it argues that instead of enhancing resettlement, Through the Gate is actually enhancing resentment with Transforming Rehabilitation appearing to accentuate, rather than mediate, long-standing operational concerns within the prison system. The article argues that unless there is a significant renewal of the structures, processes and mechanisms of administering support for addressing the rehabilitative needs of prisoners, the current operational flaws within Through the Gate provision risk deepening the sense of a penal crisis.

Location, libation and leisure: An examination of the use of licensed venues to help challenge sexual violence

Anti-rape campaign messages have increasingly targeted men in order to educate them on the law of (sexual) consent. The 18–24 age demographic are at increased risk of experiencing sex offences, with over half of these crimes involving alcohol consumption. The interactions which culminate in alcohol-involved rape often commence in night-time venues, making intuitive sense for prevention campaigns to be based within licensed establishments. The Night Time Economy, however, comprises venues where people go to drink, have fun, take ‘time out’ and which are characterised and criticised for their promotion of sexism. This article therefore asks: how useful are licensed spaces in promoting rape prevention discourses amongst young men? To this end, the article analyses 41 students’ discussions (across six focus groups) regarding a rape prevention campaign that ran in one English city and that directed its prevention advice at males. In doing so, we argue that environments which incite narratives of loss of control and hypersexuality compromise the ability to counter sexual offending. We also argue that the presence of sexually violent advertising within licenced spaces undermines considerably the call to end gendered violence.

Too Drunk to Consent? Exploring the Contestations and Disruptions in Male Focused Sexual Violence Prevention Interventions

Primary prevention interventions, often in the form of media campaigns, are frequently utilized in order to tackle sexual violence. However, many in the United Kingdom have been criticized for perpetuating victim-blaming, due to their focus on the behaviour of women. One notable exception is a Liverpool City Council Campaign, which targeted young men (aged 18–24) in a bid to reduce rates of alcohol-related rape. Drawing upon an assessment involving 41 male university students, this article generates original insights into the development and utilization of male-focused rape prevention interventions. As this analysis shows, the young men’s responses to the campaign involved negotiating discourses of sex, consent, rape, sexuality and gender – especially masculinity. While participants frequently drew upon stereotypes and misconceptions, moments of contestation and disruption emerged. We argue that interventions should concentrate upon masculinity and moments of disruption and contestation (possibly through the use of peer group discussions), in order to encourage critical reflections on gender and sexual violence and to potentially engender more ethical practices.

Cannabis Use in an English Community: Acceptance, Anxieties, and the Liminality of Drug Prohibition

Cannabis occupies an ambiguous social, cultural, economic, and legal position, meaning that the way communities construct, interact with, and interpret drug markets is a complicated and uncertain process. This article seeks to explain these ambiguities by investigating the place of cannabis use in a UK borough, drawing on qualitative empirical data collated from a sample (N = 68) of practitioners, local residents, cannabis users, and their families. In doing so, the article employs the concept of liminality (whereby individuals and spaces occupy a position at both ends of a threshold) to explore how community behaviors and norms relate to issues of space, harm, and drug policy. The article contextualizes the position of cannabis use within the fieldwork site, exploring a series of competing contradictions that divided participants between the rhetoric and reality of drug prohibition. Drug prohibition suggests cannabis use to be dangerous, which prompted concern. However, the lived reality of prohibition for residents sat in stark juxtaposition: The drug was used commonly and publicly, was effectively decriminalized, and its use (reluctantly) accommodated. This malaise placed residents within what is described here as the liminality of drug prohibition, in which notions of the licit and illicit became blurred and whereby the illegality of cannabis augmented anxieties yet simultaneously proved a barrier to addressing them. In conclusion, the current study provides further evidence of prohibitionist drug policy proliferating rather than mitigating drug-related harms.