Nathan Monk

Looking at some of the current developments in penal policy, there is a sense of history
repeating itself. Almost exactly twenty years ago, a hard line Secretary of State took up
post , promising decent but austere prisons , while today’s minister offers the prospect of
Spartan but humane ones. (Mail on Sunday 2013) The 1990’s saw the very existence of a
probation service threatened by a minister whose big idea was replacing social work
trained professionals with former military personnel. Today there is once again the
existential threat to probation with the big idea appearing to be the unleashing of an army
of ex-offender mentors on those leaving prison – although as with the earlier proposal
there are major questions about the viability of the plan (Daily Telegraph 2013). In the
1990’s , Michael Howard went on to propose the scrapping of parole and early release
measures which prompted the then Chief Justice to opine that “never in the history of our
criminal law have such far reaching proposals been put forward on the strength of such
flimsy and dubious evidence” (House of Lords, 1996). Today we read that Justice Secretary
Chris Grayling is to change Britain’s ‘dishonest’ sentencing rules that allow inmates to walk
free halfway through their jail terms (Daily Mail 2013).

This article aims to outline and discuss a number of issues that arise from the current popular conceptualisations of ‘the drug problem’. It is argued that debates focus on ‘taken-for-granted’ understandings of key terms and concepts, and in doing so, fail to grasp the complexities of the ways in which the drug problem is currently understood. The article therefore discusses current popular discourse by exploring the ways in which key terms are employed, and how these serve to simplify the issues concerned, and, at the same time to establish false divisions; key amongst these is the division between legal and illegal drugs. This article argues that it is only in acknowledging these complexities and contradictions that the debate can move forward.

Abstract

Dialogue between Professor Paul Senior, co-editor of the BJCJ since its inception in 2002 and Mike Nellis, emeritus professor at Strathclyde University and BJCJ Advisory Board member

As an offender, even as an ex-offender, I always felt I was at war in some way with this society, from an early age, and it has been a long journey to get to the point where I now believe l must take on some moral responsibility, and put something back, based on my experience. When I look around at the young people of today and see the same things happening to them as happened to me when I was young, it seems to me that the politicians and professionals have still not learnt how to deal with “problematic youth”, the dangers and difficulties they face, and the problems they cause for others. The purpose of this article is to enable people to understand what I term the “Social Deprivation Mindset” (SDM) – the outlook of many young people today – and to suggest that the criminal justice system should place more emphasis on changing the mindset of problematic individuals, rather than placing most of their efforts on challenging their re-offending. I believe that there are and can be people like me, ex-prisoners, who have changed their own lives around and who can now play an important role helping others to change. I am not saying that all ex-prisoners can or are able to do this, and, of course, even I would advocate stringent rules and regulations being put into place by government agencies like probation to constrain harmful behaviour.