Nathan Monk

Traditionally in the UK scant research attention has been paid to the arrestee population. The introduction of the NEW-ADAM programme has done much to change this. To date, arrestees have not featured in research that is relevant to the normalization of drug use and it is argued that they should be. This article will posit six reasons which when combined will demonstrate arrestees’ suitability to the normalization thesis. First, when one explores the contemporary drug scene and observes that drug use is at the centre of youth culture, many of the distinctions that were once held to define arrestees as highly deviant due to their drug use can no longer be maintained; second, a diverse range of groups are using drugs as part of their everyday lifestyle and the addition of arrestees merely adds to the existing diversity; third, arrestees are the first to try new drugs and form new modes of drug consumption patterns which are later mirrored by other drug using groups; fourth, the features of normalization are present in the levels and patterns of arrestees drug consumption; fifth, leisure plays a key role in arrestees drug and other criminal behaviour; and finally, arrestees have a greater willingness to report use of those drug types that are considered to be normalized.

Whilst issues of rural poverty and exclusion have received some national media attention in recent years, the problem of racist victimisation in rural areas has been largely overlooked within academic and political discussion of the rural. Drawing upon research conducted by the authors in two rural English counties over a two year period, this paper asserts that racist prejudice is very much part of the reality of rural living for minority ethnic groups whose presence in the countryside tends to be overlooked. The paper discusses the experiences of victims of racial harassment to illustrate the disturbing nature, extent and impact of racism in rural areas, and suggests that the enduring ‘invisibility’ of the problem is compounded by flawed multi-agency responses to racist incidents. It is argued that agencies need to develop a deeper understanding of racism in the rural arena and this can only occur once they comprehend the needs and characteristics of rural minority ethnic communities.

This paper offers some critical reflections on and lesson-drawing from the current modernising project in the local governance of crime, justice and safety in the UK and Australia. It begins with a sociological account of the growing salience of appeals to community in crime prevention and community safety. The seductions and dangers of the discourse of ‘community in the singular are examined before a ‘defence’ of radical articulations of the ‘communal’ is made. Finally five major challenges facing proponents of community-based prevention, safety and justice are highlighted.

Electronic monitoring (EM) in England and Wales remains surprisingly understudied and undertheorised. Given the strength of New Labour’s commitment to it, heightened in the recent Correctional Services Review, coupled with moves towards the increased use of surveillance in criminal justice, it is not unreasonable to think that EM technologies will one day become a normal and dominant feature of community supervision. This paper reviews recent policy developments regarding EM and seeks to clarify its exact nature as a penalty, scotching the idea that it is incapacitative in the way that both its supporters and critics have claimed. It explores the increasingly ambivalent place of EM on the tariff and develops a typology of compliance, so as to better understand the difference EM might make to community supervision.

Drawing upon three years experience of teaching through Blackboard, a Managed Virtual Learning Environment (MVLE), the authors examine the conceptual confusion that tends to surround e-learning. They explore the new opportunities and limitations afforded to students in an on-line learning environment compared to traditional educational learning environments. The article describes, contextualises and documents the particular experience of delivering the Diploma in Probation Studies (DipPS) on-line to Trainee Probation Officers in North Wales and Dyfed Powys, and incorporates feedback from the Trainees themselves to illustrate some of the benefits and issues faced by e-learning students. A clear distinction is made between the MVLE and distance learning, and the article concludes by arguing that blended learning, based on andragogic constructivist strategies is the way forward, as opposed to traditional established pedagogies that are well served in the real world classroom and in correspondence based distance learning.

This article uses the methodology of Law and Literature to explore a number of themes in Restorative Justice for Juveniles. It draws upon Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and a number of Kate Chopin’s stories from her collection A Night in Acadie. This study examines literary representations of how children and young peoples grow to develop a sense of justice through experience The aim of this study is to raise a question about whether, in our attempts to develop Restorative Justice for Juveniles, we have fully taken into account the way in which children and young people make sense of justice in the context of their experience and their own agendas as developing human beings. It argues that their senses of justice, and how justice fits into their worldviews, ought to be perplexing to adults, and that what adults impose or suggest as possible fair solutions, can be paradoxically undermined, or have unforeseen consequences. Above all, however, we see in these tales the transformatory power of positive and negative relationships.